HOMER  MARTIN 

3Y  FRANK  JEWETT  MATHER,  Jr. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/homermartinpoetiOOmath 


THE  HARP  OF  THE  WINDS 
THE  METROPOLITAN  MUSEUM  OF  ART 
Signed  and  dated  1895,  canvas,  28J  inches  high,  40  inches  wide. 


HOMER  MARTIN 

POET  IN  LANDSCAPE 


BY 

Frank  Jewett  Mather,  Jr. 


New  York 
PRIVATELY  PRINTED 

MCMXII 


Copyright,  19 12 
by 

Frederic  Fairchild  Sherman 


PREFACE 


MRS.  MARTIN'S  "Homer  Martin:  a  Reminis* 
cence"  (New  York:  William  Macbeth,  1904), 
is  so  charmingly  written  and  so  adequate  on  the  per= 
sonal  side  that  only  weighty  reasons  can  justify  a  return 
to  the  theme.  Such  reasons  are  found  in  the  increasing 
interest  in  Homer  Martin's  work,  in  the  lapse  of  years 
that  makes  a  critical  estimate  more  possible,  and  in 
the  discovery  of  new  biographical  material.  I  have 
depended  much  on  the  "Reminiscence,"  though,  be* 
ing  written  chiefly  from  memory,  it  contains  a  num* 
ber  of  slips  in  chronology.  Wherever  this  book  is  at 
variance  with  it,  documentary  material  justifies  the 
divergence.  Without  the  generous  aid  of  Martin's 
surviving  friends  and  the  cooperation  of  owners  of  his 
pictures,  this  book  could  not  have  been  undertaken. 
"W.  C.  Brownell,  Montgomery  Schuyler  and  Edward 
Gay  have  kindly  communicated  indispensable  recoh 
lections  and  points  of  view.  Messrs. Thomas  B.Clarke 
and  John  Du  Fais  of  New  York,  and  Dr.  Montgomery 
Mosher  of  Albany  have  lent  me  precious  sheaves  of 
Martin's  letters.  Mr.  William  Macbeth  put  at  my  dis* 
posal  his  large  collection  of  sketches,  which  are  about 
the  only  evidence  for  the  painter's  artistic  origins  and 
early  movements;  and  contributed  with  unfailing 


obligingness  muck  information  that  could  have  been 
got  from  no  other  source.  My  debt  to  other  corre* 
spondents  and  to  the  scanty  literature  on  the  subject 
is  expressed  in  these  pages  at  the  proper  places.  No 
enumeration  of  the  many  collectors  who  have  per? 
mitted  access  to  their  homes  and  photographing  of 
their  treasures  can  here  be  made.  Every  illustration 
in  the  book  and  nearly  every  mention  of  a  picture  in 
the  text  may  be  taken  as  a  grateful  recognition  of 
such  a  courtesy. 

F.J.  M., Jr. 

Princeton,  N.J. 
April,  1 9 12 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


The  Harp  of  the  Winds     ....  Frontispiece 

The  Old  Mill   Page  16 

Mount  Jefferson  and  Mount  Adams  .     .  "  16 

Lake  Sanford   1,1  24 

Spring  Morning   kk  32 

Lake  Champlain   1 '  32 

Andante :  Fifth  Symphony     ....  11  40 

The  Mussel  Gatherers   11  48 

Sand  Dunes,  Lake  Ontario      ....  1 '  48 

Westchester  Hills   "  56 

An  Old  Manor,  Normandy    ....  11  64 

Honneur  Light  .    1 '  64 

Adirondack  Scenery   "  72 


« 


HOMER  MARTIN 


PART  ONE 

HISTLER  once  introduced  his  friend 
Homer  Martin  in  these  words:  "Gens 
tlemen,  this  is  Homer  Martin .  He  doesn't 
look  as  if  he  were,  hut  he  is."  Martin's 
doubtless  adequate  retort  has  not  been 
preserved,  but  the  quip  must  have  cut.  Precisely  this 
not  looking  what  he  was  was  a  lifelong  disadvantage. 
Careless  and  positively  untidy  in  dress,  eccentric  in 
gait,  his  face  cruelly  marred  by  a  chronic  eczema, 
Homer  Martin  certainly  did  not  look  the  sensitive 
artist.  His  friend  George  Boughton  used  to  say  rather 
cynically  that  he  couldn't  afford  to  have  Homer  about 
the  studio,  so  deterrent  was  his  effect  upon  conven? 
tionally  minded  British  patrons. 

Had  Martin  chosen  to  win  these  Philistines,  he 
need  only  have  spoken.  As  to  his  talk  there  is  only 
one  opinion.  Golden,  unexpected  sayings  flowed  from. 
him  unfailingly.  Wherever  there  was  good  talk  he 
was  easily  first.  The  best  minds  waited  eagerly  for  his 
utterance ;  the  servants  at  his  club  and  the  children  of 
his  friends  delighted  in  it.  Inert  or  conventional  peo* 
pie,  however,  were  often  appalled  by  his  flights.  No 
neutral  attitude  in  his  regard  was  possible.  The  best 
masculine  society  New  York  offered  was  at  his  feet, 

7 


and  he  cared  little  for  any  other.  He  loved  a  con vi vis 
ality  that  permitted  a  fine  Rabelaisianism.  Constraint, 
other  than  that  of  his  own  fastidious  taste,  was  irk? 
some  to  him.  Thus,  while  his  friends  included  the 
foremost  physicians,  journalists  and  critics  in  New 
York,  among  this  elite  he  preferred  men  of  essential 
simplicity  whose  outlook  upon  reality  was  genial, 
wide  and  fearless. 

Such  men  still  regard  his  friendship  as  a  patent  of 
nobility.  One  and  all  they  agree  that  his  wit  is  income 
municable,  growing  as  it  did  out  of  the  occasion.  ""It 
cannot  be  decanted"  Montgomery  Schuyler  writes 
me,  and  I  recall  Emerson's  account  of  Thoreau's  con- 
versation  as  "a  continual  coining  of  the  present  mo* 
ment."  Yes,  the  best  of  Homer  Martin — those  '''cosy 
studio  and  tavern  times"  lovingly  hinted  at  in  Elih  u 
Vedder's  autobiography — is  irrecoverable.  But  cer= 
tain  retorts  have  survived  which  faintly  suggest  the 
sudden  flash  from  the  blue.  To  a  patron  urgent  for 
a  "poetic"  title  for  a  lovely  wood  interior  Martin 
grunted,  "Oh!  it's  the  Home  of  the  Telegraph  Pole." 
Once  when  asked  how  he  liked  a  new  ceiling  design 
in  his  club — a  pattern,  as  he  saw,  of  wriggling  inepti* 
tude — he  affected  a  dazed  expression  and,  parodying  a 
popular  refrain,  hummed,  "Wait  till  the  ceiling  rolls 
by."  A  whole  architectural  criticism  might  be  woven 
about  that  text.  A  friend  asked  him  to  paint  something 
on  the  Fifth  Symphony  of  Beethoven,  and  the  response 
was, '  *  Paint  God  ?  "  But  Martin  did  one  of  his  serenest 
masterpieces  with  the  piano  partition  of  the  great  an* 

8 


dante  sounding  in  his  ears.  Oneof  his  dicta  has  become 
classic,  at  least  among  the  large  and  respectable  public 
of  beer  lovers.  A  lady,  alluding  to  Kis  well-known 
foible,  asked  if  be  didn't  drink  too  mucb  beer.  "Mas 
dame,  tbere  is  not  too  mucb  beer  "was  bis  monumental 
rejoinder.  Worthy  also  of  proverbial  currency  is  his 
pathetic  explanation  of  a  ruinous  sale  to  a  mean  buyer 
— "He  had  me  by  the  slack  of  the  belly."  This  was  a 
hold  that  adversity  had  not  infrequently  upon  Homer 
Martin.  Generally  his  wit,  a  true  product  of  corns 
panionship,  was  instinct  with  good  nature,  but  it  could 
cut  as  well.  Standing  in  front  of  the  Tenth  Street 
Studios,  where  he  worked  for  about  seventeen  years, 
he  was  asked  what  a  neighboring  big  building  was. 
"Its  a  half  orphan  asylum"  was  the  answer,"  and 
this,"  turning  back  to  the  studios,  "is  a  half  artist 
asylum." 

The  wit  that  made  him  the  center  of  a  choice  circle 
isolated  him  from  his  fellow  artists.  Except  for  a  few 
like  the  taciturn  Winslow  Homer  and  the  manyssided 
La  Farge,  he  cared  little  for  their  company,  and  they 
cared  as  little  for  his  work.  Aside  from  his  members 
ship  in  our  three  chief  exhibiting  societies,  I  cannot 
find  that  Homer  Martin  ever  received  any  prize  or 
similar  honor  from  the  craft  he  adorned.  His  fellows 
hardly  knew  how  to  take  him.  His  fastidious  spirit 
was  as  alien  to  the  random  Bohemianism  of  the  sevens 
ties  as  his  painting  was  mysterious  to  those  who  still 
held  the  faith  as  taught  at  Diisseldorf.  He  did  things 
that  were  not  done  by  National  Academicians — left 


9 


things  out  or  merely  indicated  them,  slurred  local 
color  for  general  tone.  Skies  were  by  definition  blue, 
and  bis  often  displayed  an  unmistakable  vibrant 
green.  Worst  of  all  be  openly  scoffed  at  estabKshed 
pictorial  dignitaries  and  unblusbingly  admired  tbe 
flimsy  and  superficial  Corot.  In  sbort  be  early  ac* 
quired  an  Isbmaelite  repute  in  tbe  metier  wbicb  be 
never  took  tbe  pains  to  reverse.  Tbey  tbougbt  bim 
something  of  an  amateur,  and  still  his  fame  remains 
a  bit  mysterious  to  surviving  colleagues  who  meas* 
ure  technical  accomplishment  by  the  consecrated 
standards  of  the  schools.  During  his  lifetime  he  gens 
erally  passed  as  a  rather  formidable  eccentric.  His 
glory  was  esoteric.  The  same  group  that  loved  him 
and  his  talk  loved  his  pictures  and  bought  them  or 
saw  that  others  did.  Thus  the  slack  of  the  belly  was 
periodically  taken  up,  and  wit  and  pictures  were 
forthcoming  for  many  a  year. 

Since  Homer  Martin  was  possibly  even  more  re* 
markable  as  a  man  than  as  a  painter,  it  has  seemed 
well  to  present  this  thin  shadow=picture  of  him  before 
proceeding  to  the  more  consistent  chronicle  of  his 
artistic  development.  And  here  it  should  be  said  that 
the  Puck4ike  tricksiness  of  the  man  dropped  away 
the  moment  he  began  to  paint.  The  cleverest  of  his 
contemporaries,  there  is  absolutely  no  cleverness  in 
his  pictures ;  just  breathless,  painstaking  reverence. 
In  his  rarely  poetical  evocations  of  nature  he  seldom 
seems  wholly  at  his  ease.  There  is  a  sense  of  dread 
lest  the  mood  may  fail  or  the  hand  betray  it.  He 


10 


often  seems  to  fumble  delicately  for  his  effects,  as 
Gray  did  in  poetry.  Pensiveness  is  his  peculiar  note, 
and  reticence.  I  cannot  wholly  agree  with  Sadakichi 
Hartmann  that  Homer  Martin  ""makes  use  of  land? 
scape  to  express  his  own  weariness  and  bitterness," 
but  evidently  he  never  attained  that  roving,  royal 
familiarity  with  nature  which  is  the  mark,  say,  of 
Inness.  How  the  highly  specialized  and  sublimated 
mood  and  vision  of  Homer  Martin  grew  out  of  native 
bent  and  moulding  circumstance  is  the  subject  of  my 
inquiry. 

part  Two 

HOMER  DODGE  MARTIN  was  born  in  Albany, 
N.  Y.,  October  28th,  1836,  the  youngest  of  four 
children  of  Homer  Martin  and  Sarah  Dodge.  His 
father,  a  man  of  Lincolnian  worth  and  simplicity,  was 
of  good  New  England  stock  and  a  carpenter  by  trade. 
His  mother,  being  of an  old  Albany  family,  had  greater 
pretensions  to  gentility.  She  was  a  masterful  woman, 
possessing  in  crude  form  that  love  of  good  books  and 
good  pictures  which  distinguished  her  youngest  son. 
Both  parents  were  devout  Methodists,  but  the  father, 
essentially  a  mild  man,  willingly  left  militant  piety  to 
his  wife.  Edward  Gay  still  remembers  how  the  scan? 
daliz-ed  matron  once  dispersed  a  young  folks'  dance 
that  had  been  improvised  at  home  in  her  absence. 

Young  Homer  began  to  draw  in  infancy.  A  pencil 
and  paper,  his  mother  later  told  his  wife,  was  from  his 
twentieth  month,  a  sure  way  to  pacify  him.  Through 


11 


a  desultory  schooling  that  ended  in  his  thirteenth  year, 
the  boy  kept  to  his  sketching.  At  the  paternal  carpen? 
ter's  bench  the  lad  soon  proved  his  incapacity,  and  was 
put  in  a  shop.  There,  by  design  or  from  native  dislike 
of  the  clerkly  amenities,  he  affronted  old  customers 
and  repelled  new  ones.  He  passed  next  into  the  office 
of  a  cousin  who  was  an  architect  and  builder.  Here 
young  Homer  made  his  first  creditable  exit.  Through 
a  congenital  defect  of  sight  he  could  not  draw  verticals 
with  assurance,  and  there  probably  were  other  good 
reasons  why  he  did  not  shine  as  a  mechanical  draughts* 
man.  In  these  apparently  futile  years,  however,  the 
boy  had  matured.  By  some  oddch  ance  a  copy  ofVol, 
ney  s ' 1  Ruins  "  fell  into  his  hands .  The  first  revelation 
was  of  the  absurdity  of  the  sectarianism  to  which  he 
had  been  bred,  the  permanent  result  was  a  toughs 
minded  scepticism  by  which  he  lived  and  died. 

Within  three  years  Homer  had  failed  as  carpenter, 
clerk  and  architects  assistant.  At  this  point  the  sculp* 
tor  E.  D.  Palmer  took  a  hand  and  insisted  that  the  lad 
be  permitted  to  succeed  in  his  evident  vocation.  Pal* 
mer  was  deservedly  a  great  figure  in  Albany.  To 
beginners  like  George  H.  Boughton,  Launt  Thomp* 
son,  the  sculptor;  and  especially  to  poor  boys  like 
Edward  Gay  and  Homer  Martin,  Palmer  was  a  bea? 
con  light.  For  had  he  not  from  an  artisan's  begin? 
nings  attained  national  repute?  Moreover  Palmer 
took  his  position  as  dean  of  the  Albany  artists  with 
benign  seriousness.  Evening  after  evening  he 
appeared  in  the  back  shop  of  Annesley  and  Vint,  art 


12 


dealers  and  colormen,  to  talk  with  all  comers.  Besides 
the  youngsters  already  mentioned,  James  and  Wil* 
liam  Hart,  both  esteemed  landscape  painters,  would 
occasionally  attend.  At  what  was  virtually  an  artislfs 
club,  the  talk  was  free  and  inspiring.  Of  the  younger 
men  Boughton  and  Martin  were  easily  the  leading 
spirits.  Boughton  was  then  far  the  best  painter  of  the 
lot  and  the  most  judicious  wit,  Martin  had  already 
developed  his  gift  for  gentle  mystification  and  mon= 
strous  paradox.  He  dominated  the  group.  After  the 
venerable  Palmer  had  withdrawn,  the  session  was 
often  continued  more  boisterously  into  the  night,  at 
Taylor's  or  some  other  accredited  dispensary  of  the 
excellent  cream  ale  of  the  Hudson. 

Albany  evidently  supplied  that  comradeship  which 
is  indispensable  to  most  artists,  and  it  supplied  as  well 
loyal  patronage.  The  tone  of  the  State  Capital  had 
been  set  when  politics  was  still  an  aristocratic  pursuit. 
Solid  old  families  of  good  Dutch  and  English  extraction 
had  gradually  accumulated  wealth  while  preserving 
traditional  good  manners  and  increasing  an  unpre? 
tentious  culture.  The  Albanians,  were  proud  of  their 
artists — of  the  Scotch  brothers  Hart  who  had  risen 
from  coach  painting,  of  the  gracious  and  venerable 
Palmer  whose  studio  became  a  local  wonder,  of  the 
whole  set  of  ambitious  youngsters  who  met  at  Annes= 
ley's.  The  Albanians  bought  pictures  gladly  without 
questioning  the  price.  They  even  afforded  a  limited 
opportunity  for  a  manner  of  mural  painting.  Walter 
Palmer  writes  that  it  was  a  custom  to  set  a  large  land* 


x3 


scape  above  tke  mantel  in  the  place  often  occupied  by 
a  mirror,  and  that  most  of  tke  larger  oblong  canvases 
of  tke  Harts  and  of  Homer  Martin  were  painted  with, 
suck  decorative  intent.  Wkatever  courtesy  and  gens 
erosity  could  do  for  ker  artist  group  Albany  did.  Criti* 
cism  ske  could  not  provide,  and  tke  terrible  defect  of 
an  artistic  apprenticeskip  tkere  was  tke  lack  of  fine 
examples.  Tke  sentimental  softness  of  tke  leading 
painters,  tke  Harts,  was,  to  put  it  gently,  unexem* 
plary.  Even  tke  boys  made  fun  of  tke  Harts  on  tke 
sly.  Albany  was  only  too  devoted  to  ker  local  sckool, 
and  I  doubt  if  any  tking  so  good  as  a  Durand  or  an  early 
Inness  was  set  in  any  ckimney^piece.  Of  tke  Albany 
group  only  tke  precocious  Bougkton  skowed  any  in* 
stinctive  intelligence  for  tke  craft.  His  metkod  of 
limiting  tke  palette  and  working  in  karmonious  tones 
of  brown  and  green  seemed  a  kind  of  recreancy  to  tke 
variety  of  nature.  He  was  wellsto^do,  began  to  travel 
early,  was  settled  in  London  by  1861,  and  tkus  de= 
prived  kis  group  of  a  natural  leader.  Tkere  exist  a  few 
landscapes  painted  by  Homer  Martin  in  tke  fifties 
wkick,  but  for  tke  signature  would  seem  too  prepos* 
terously  bad  ever  to  kave  come  even  from  kis  juvenile 
kand.  Tkey  are  of  a  poisonous  autumnal  gariskness. 
It  cannot  kave  been  for  suck  daubs  tkat  Palmer  stood 
sponsor  for  kim.  Certain  pencil  drawings  of  rocks  and 
trees,  fine  and  delicately  strong,  must  kave  settled  tke 
matter.  Palmer's  taste  and  wisdom  were  strikingly 
skown  in  kis  kopeful  verdict  on  suck  slender  evidence. 
At  sixteen  tke  untrained  boy  Homer  Martin  was  a 


14 


titular  artist.  A  few  years  later  he  had  his  studio  in 
the  Museum  Building,  hired  from  James  Hart,  whose 
tutelage  lie  evaded  within  a  fortnight,  entering  inde* 
pendently  upon  his  single  brief  period  of  prosperity. 
Since  he  once  called  a  forest  lake  by  Hart  "a  scene  of 
niggled  magnitude, "  it  is  plain  that  the  lad's  eyes  were 
already  open  to  those  problems  of  scale  and  space 
which  later  preoccupied  him.  Martin  frankly  accepted 
the  traditional  scenic  ideal  of  landscape  painting  and 
always  remained  faithful  to  it.  An  intimacy  which 
involved  narrowing  the  view  or  isolating  a  single 
object  he  seldom  practiced.  By  generalization  and 
fine  color  he  actually  realized  what  had  been  merely 
the  ambition  of  Durand  and  Cole.  Thus  Martin's 
landscape  painting  was  the  artistic  fulfilling  of  the 
American  mode  through  selection,  just  as  Bierstadt's 
and  Church's  were  a  kind  of  grandiose  reduction  to 
the  ab  surd  through  oversexplicitness.  In  his  love  of 
wide,  welkbalanced  spaces  Homer  Martin  seems  to 
have  gone  back  to  the  authentic  pioneer  of  the  scenic 
genre  Claude.  In  insisting  upon  this  scenic  and  tradi* 
tional  quality  of  Martin's  work  I  have  run  far  beyond 
his  Albany  accomplishment.  But  the  matter  justifies 
such  an  anticipation.  Homer  Martin  has  thought? 
lessly  been  regarded  as  a  minor  follower  of  the  men 
of  1830.  In  a  far  truer  sense  Inness  and  Wyant  may 
be  regarded  as  proselytes  of  Barbizon.  Precisely  what 
separates  Homer  Martin  from  men  who,  like  Corot 
and  Boudin,  profoundly  influenced  him  is  this  prefer* 
ence  for  wide  spaces  and  for  the  generalized  elegiac 


mood  which  these  evoke.  It  is  said  that  he  coined  the 
phrase  11  The  Hudson  River  School."  If  so,  it  would 
have  been  only  half  in  jest,  for  he  was  introspective 
enough  to  realize  that  he  himself  was  the  last  and 
greatest  expression  of  that  discredited  movement. 

To  return  to  the  studio  in  the  Museum  Building, 
Homer  Martin's  canvases  of  about  i860  are  meanly- 
painted,  small  in  touch,  and  thin  in  texture,  but  they 
already  begin  to  show  fine  and  simple  arrangements — 
a  genuine  scenic  sense,  and  at  least  the  intention  of 
large  and  simple  masses  of  balancing  color.  Of  his 
movements  in  the  first  productive  years  little  is  known. 
Edward  Gay  recalls  a  tramping  trip  through  the  Cats* 
kills  and  an  occasion  when  Homer  wheedled  a  dinner 
out  of  a  farmer  by  representing  two  hungry  boys  as 
scientific  farmers  in  search  of  a  domain.  Some  early 
sketches  indicate  an  acquaintance  with  the  nearer 
Adirondacks  about  North  Creek ;  and  probably  with 
Lake  George  and  Lake  Champlain.  His  first  exhibits, 
in  the  National  Academy  of  1857,  were  of  subjects  at 
Salisbury  in  the  Connecticut  Berkshires.  ""Sage's 
Ravine"  and  "Twin  Lakes"  were  the  titles.  To  these 
lake  and  mountain  subjects  he  constantly  returned ; 
some  of  the  masterpieces  of  his  last  rally  were  based 
on  these  earliest  observations.  Of  mountains  he  once 
constituted  himself  the  champion  against  the  great 
Dr.  Holmes,  who  had  written  in  the  "Autocrat"  that 
they  were  unfriendly.  Homer  Martin  wrote  asking 
the  Autocrat  to  visit  an  exhibition  of  his  own  sketches 
then  on  in  Boston  and  be  convinced  of  the  friendliness 


THE  OLD  MILL 
COLLECTION  OF  LYMAN  A.  MILLS 
Signed  and  dated  on  a  boulder  I860,  canvas,  30  inches  high,  56  inches  wide. 


MOUNT  JEFFERSON  AND  MOUNT  ADAMS 
THE  METROPOLITAN  MUSEUM  OF  ART 
Signed  and  dated  J868,  canvas,  30  inches  high,  40  inches  wide. 


of  mountains.  One  may  assume  that  the  kindly  essay? 
ist  went,  but  the  incident  has  left  no  trace  in  his  pub* 
lished  memoirs. 

We  have  seen  this  young  painter  groping  under 
disadvantages  for  something  like  rhythm  in  design 
and  distinction  in  acquaintance.  Suddenly  there  came 
to  him  a  share  in  the  greater  rhythms ;  he  fell  in  love. 
Elizabeth  Gilbert  Davis  was  his  superior  in  education, 
culture  and  position,  and  through  thirty=nve  years  of 
wedded  life  remained  his  superior  in  moral  poise.  He 
saw  her  on  the  street,  made  acquaintance  with  her 
brother — both  were  frequenters  of  the  Philharmonic 
concerts — and  contrived  that  she  should  visit  his 
studio.  The  sequel  must  be  told  in  the  words  of  Mrs. 
Martin's  admirable  '•'•Reminiscence"  of  her  husband. 
"The  studio,"  she  writes,  "struck  me  as  the 
most  untidy  room  I  had  ever  entered.  I  remember 
his  rushing  to  throw  things  behind  a  large  screen. 
I  was  not  used  to  paintings.  Such  as  I  had  seen  had 
seemed  to  me  mere  daubs  to  which  any  good  en* 
graving  would  be  altogether  preferable.  But  on 
that  afternoon  there  was  a  large  unfinished  lands 
scape  on  the  easel,  which  even  to  my  unpractised 
eye  conveyed  the  promise  of  beauty.  There  were 
two  great  boulders  lifting  their  heads  out  of  a  shal* 
low  foreground  brook,  and  one  day,  much  later, 
when  I  was  there,  he  painted  his  own  initials  on 
one  of  them,  and  mine  on  the  other." 
With  this  picture  called  "The  Old  Mill"  we  shall 
in  due  time  make  acquaintance. 

*7 


They  were  married  on  the  21st  of  June,  1 861.  Their 
honeymoon  began  at  Twin  Lakes  in  the  Connecticut 
Berkshires  and  continued  in  a  friendly  farmhouse 
among  the  upper  Taconics  at  Fort  Ann,  N.  Y.  The 
match  seemed  veritably  made  in  heaven.  She  was 
much  that  he  meant  to  be.  A  vivid  creature,  admired 
by  his  brilliant  New  York  comrades,  her  bent  was 
chiefly  literary.  Edward  Gay  still  tells  gratefully  how 
she  took  him  up,  an  uncouth  boy,  and,  rightly  thinks 
ing  he  needed  contact  with  the  best,  coached  him 
in  the  sonnets  of  Shakespeare.  Soon  she  developed 
her  gift.  She  was  one  of  the  first  of  that  remarkable 
band  of  reviewers  recruited  at  the  founding  of  "The 
Nation"  by  Lawrence  Godkin  and  Wendell  P.  Garri* 
son.  For  many  lean  years  her  tireless  pen  eked  out  the 
family  supplies.  Like  her  husband  she  had  revolted 
against  the  narrow  evangelical  creed  in  which  she 
had  been  reared.  Two  persons  of  genius  could  hardly 
have  faced  the  future  together  on  more  equal  and 
propitious  terms.  Clearly  their  destiny  lay  beyond 
Albany,  and  Martin,  who  had  been  a  contributor  at 
the  National  Academy  as  early  as  1857,  went  to 
New  York  in  the  winter  of  1862=63  and  painted  for 
a  time  in  the  studio  of  James  Smillie.  It  was  two 
years  still  before  he  found  the  attic  studio  in  the 
Tenth  Street  building  where  he  was  to  work  for 
more  than  sixteen  years,  and  brought  his  wife  and 
baby  down  to  lodgings  near  Union  Square.  And 
here  opens  a  new  chapter  of  struggle,  chagrin,  and 
withal  of  joy  and  great  accomplishment. 


PART  THREE 


IN  New  York  the  Martins  were  not  unknown.  Mar* 
tin  was  actually  resident  in  town,  at  485  Greenwich 
Street,  when,  in  1857,  he  made  his  first  Academy  ex* 
hibit.  During  the  winter  or  two  when  he  worked  in 
Smillie's  studio  in  the  old  University  Building,  he  had 
already  begun  to  meet  the  painters  and  writers  of  the 
city.  And  Mrs.  Martin,  who  for  several  years  had 
been  reviewing  for  the ' '  Leader  "  and 1 '  Round  Table  " 
was  at  least  a  name  to  the  literati.  Thus  they  came 
uncommonly  well  accredited  to  a  city  extraordinarily 
hospitable  to  its  artists.  In  those  days  people  gladly 
paid  admission  to  see  a  single  big  picture  of  Church 
or  Bierstadt,  while  the  amiable  Kensett  reaped  an  an* 
nual  golden  harvest  for  his  gently  idyllic  coast  and 
lake  scenes.  Indeed  social  and  financial  success  was 
not  the  exception  but  the  rule  among  Academicians 
of  those  days.  In  1868  Martin  was  elected  an  Associ? 
ate  of  the  Academy,  and  his  way  should  have  been 
plain.  As  a  matter  of  fadl,  between  his  painting  and 
Mrs.  Martin's  writing  they  did  not  do  badly.  For 
years,  she  writes,  their  income  ran  beyond  two  thou? 
sand  dollars.  That  was  a  decent  living  as  things  then 
went,  yet  they  were  never  really  at  ease.  In  debt 
when  they  started,  there  was  I  suppose  no  time  there? 
after  when  they  were  quite  clear.  Neither,  I  judge, 
was  capable  of  strict  management.  Meals  occurred — 
or  failed  to  do  so.  A  guest  at  a  belated  supper  still 
remembers  the  "moonlight  lamb."  It  was  Mrs.  Mar? 


tin's  cheerful  name  for  a  pale  undercooked  joint  more 
notable  for  exceptional  hue  than  for  toothsomeness. 
Martin's  heart  was  in  his  dreams  and  in  his  gorgeous 
tavern  times,  hers  was  in  her  writing  and  in  new  and 
keen  religious  experiences  which  he  did  not  share. 
Between  them,  things  went  after  a  fashion,  and  the 
two  hoys  somehow  came  up,  but  from  all  accounts 
the  housekeeping  on  both  sides  must  have  been,  as 
one  chooses  to  regard  it,  a  sublime  or  a  pathetic  mud? 
die.  And  though  all  the  best  latchstrings  were  out, 
neither  Martin  nor  his  wife  was  capable  of  pulling 
them  with  the  requisite  alacrity.  New  York  wanted 
not  only  pictures  on  its  walls  but  artisrs  in  its  drawing 
rooms,  and  Martin  abhorred  such  payment  with  his 
person.  In  addition  Martin  soon  committed  the  un* 
pardonable  offence  of  changing  an  approved  style. 
By  the  early  seventies  he  was  affecting  colors  not 
usually  seen  in  nature  or  permitted  in  Academy  pic* 
tures.  Thus  he  got  the  repute  of  being  a  sort  of  eccen* 
trie  amateur,  and  his  product,  as  compared  with  the 
unchanging  excellence  of  Kensett,  Church,  or  Durand, 
seemed  undesirable  either  for  possession  or  invest* 
ment.  And  Martin's  inspiration  was  painfully  inter* 
mittent.  He  was  slow  to  follow  up  any  occasional 
success.  In  fact  his  idleness,  which  early  became 
legendary,  has  been  unduly  emphasized.  An  amusing 
pencil  sketch  by  Edward  Gay  is  called  "Homer  Hard 
at  Work."  It  shows  several  lads  of  the  Albany  group 
busily  sketching  while  Homer  slumbers  peacefully  in 
the  sun.  Of  course  the  fallow  periods  were  not  neces* 


20 


sarily  waited.  To  an  associate  who  twitted  Kim  for 
a  summer  passed  without  sketching  Martin  jauntily- 
remarked  that  he  had  been  "soaking  it  all  in."  To 
one  of  dull  visual  memory  the  process  may  well  have 
seemed  preposterous.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  numer* 
ous  careful  sketches  of  the  sixties  disprove  the  legend 
of  idleness,  while  spells  of  apparent  inertness  were 
often  followed  by  periods  of  intense  production .  Still 
Martin's  irregularity  was  incorrigible  and  inconven* 
ient  enough.  To  gentle  pressure  from  his  wife  in  the 
slack  time  about  1880  preceding  the  flight  to  France, 
he  responded  pathetically,  "I  cannot  paint.  I  do  not 
know  where  the  impulse  comes  from,  nor  why  it  stays 
away.  All  I  know  is  that  when  it  comes  I  can  do 
nothing  else  but  paint,  when  it  goes  I  can  do  nothing 
but  dawdle."  Upon  the  straitened  home  conditions 
that  naturally  resulted  I  have  no  wish  to  dwell.  A 
letter  dated  February  1st,  1873^0  an  old  Albany  friend, 
Dr.  Jacob  S.  Mosher,  says  all  that  need  be  said  on  this 
argument — 

"Dear  Mosher — Is  there  anyway  of  inducing 

 to  send  for  his  picture?  my  mother  is  very  sick 

and  I  have  not  seen  her  in  more  than  a  year  and  I 

can't  go  up  and  leave  s  money  unreceived  and 

unpaid  out,  for  there  are  great  clammors  from  the 
populace  of  creditors. 

"It  is  better  to  be  in  hell  than  in  art." 
The  letter  which  in  impetuous  disregard  of  punctuation 
and  venial  lapses  in  spelling  is  characteristic,  ends  in 
quite  cheerful  vein  with  an  invitation  to  the  Century 


21 


Club  and  the  statement  that  "pleasure  of  course  is  the 
real  business  of  life. "  It  suggests  both  Martin's  chronic 
embarrassments  and  that  conspiracy  of  friendship  by 
which  he  after  all  occasionally  sold  a  picture  and  was 
tided  over  to  the  years  that  saw  the  masterpieces. 

For  a  leisurely  biographer  these  friends  of  Martin's 
would  afford  a  delightful  chapter.  Chief  among  them 
was  John  Richard  Dennett,  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
in  that  great  line  of  Whig^Radical  writers  who  for 
over  a  century  have  upheld  the  moral  and  literary  diss 
tinction  of  the  Evening  Post.  Dennett  died  in  1874,  and 
oblivion,  the  swift  meed  of  the  higher  journalist,  soon 
overtook  his  fame.  But  for  Martin,  Dennett  remained 
a  kind  of  standard  by  which  mind  and  character  might 
be  tested.  In  April,  1875,  Martin  writes  to  Dr.  Mosher 
at  Staten  Island — 

"I  want  to  come  down  to  your  house  on  Sat. 

evening  and  stay  over  Sunday  and  I  want  to  bring 

Brownell. 

"I  don't  know  if  you  are  acquainted  with  B :  he 
is  City  Editor  of  the  World,  but,  what  is  of  more 
consequence,  he  is  rather  the  finest  minded  young 
man  I  know  since  Dennett's  time." 
This  was  fourteen  years  before  the  finest  minded  of 
our  American  critics  had  fully  sh  own  his  hand  in 
1,1  French  Traits.''  It  was  theb  eginning  of  a  friendship 
of singular  andreciprocal devotedness.  Fromthe  early 
seventies  or  earlier  must  date  the  comradeship  with  the 
editor  and  the  art  critic  Montgomery  Schuyler  and 
with  his  cousin  Roosevelt  Schuyler,  always  alluded 


22 


to  in  Martin's  letters  as  "Robo."  With  his  courtly- 
neighbor  in  the  Tenth  Street  Studio  Building,  La 
Farge,  Martin  was  always  in  close  relations.  One 
would  have  delighted  to  share  their  talk.  What  a 
perfect  foil  for  the  explosive  and  often  pertinently- 
slangy  wit  of  Martin  must  have  been  the  golden 
unruffled  urbanity  of  the  most  finely  civilized  of 
American  artists!  With  another  neighbor,  the  un? 
tamable  Winslow  Homer,  a  tacit  friendliness  was 
long  maintained.  Then  there  was  the  generous  fel? 
low? Albanian,  Dr.  Mosher,  the  Quarantine  Physic 
cian,  who  took  Martin  to  England  in  1876,  and  ever 
offered  him  at  the  ch  arming  house  at  Staten  Island,  a 
refuge  for  sketching  or  talk  or  rest.  In  August  of  1872 
we  find  Martin  at  New  Haven  visiting  the  poet? 
revolutionist  and  accomplished  wood  engraver,  W.  J. 
Linton.  Dr.  D.  M.  Stimson  and  his  beautiful  wife, 
whose  musical  talent  the  Martins  especially  enjoyed, 
were  later  intimates.  In  the  summer  of  1879,  Martin 
and  Dr.  Stimson  cruised  the  lower  St.  Lawrence  and 
theS  aguenay  together  in  a  chaloupe.  The  trip  is  com? 
memorated  by  certain  delightful  sketches  which  re? 
main  among  Dr.  Stimson's  many  souvenirs  of  taste  in 
life  and  in  art.  So  one  might  go  on,  but  perhaps  the 
chief  intimacies  of  the  early  time  have  been  men? 
tioned.  Martin's  election  to  the  Century  Club  in  1866 
— what  confidence  those  reverend  signors  showed  in 
this  capricious  youngster  of  thirty?two! — made  him 
the  fellow  on  easy  terms  of  many  of  the  best  minds  of 
the  city,  and  since  his  capacity  for  friendship  held 

23 


undiminished  by  years  or  weakness,  no  complete 
reckoning  of  his  mates  is  possible.  Other  friends  of 
the  gray,  later  years  shall  appear  in  their  turn.  For 
the  moment,  I  have  wished  only  to  hint  at  the  subs 
stantial  solace  that  such  friendships  brought  to  Martin 
in  these  years  of  unrelieved  straitness  at  home  and  of 
frequent  misgivings  as  to  his  art  itself. 

I  hesitate  to  add  that  this  solace  was  all  the  more 
necessary  because  the  home  itself  no  longer  presented 
quite  a  united  front.  Yet  why  hesitate  over  a  rather 
important  fact  which  Mrs.  Martin  herself  has  avowed 
in  all  simplicity?  We  have  seen  that  husband  and 
wife  at  first  shared  the  agnosticism  proper  to  so  many 
good  minds  that  had  fed  on  Darwin's  '''Origins  of 
Species"  and  Herbert  Spencer's  "First  Principles." 
In  Homer  Martin's  case  there  resulted  the  sturdy  yet 
tolerant  scepticism  in  which  he  lived  and  died.  Mrs. 
Martin,  on  the  contrary,  after  her  father's  death  m 
1866,  passed  through  a  religious  crisis  which  termi? 
nated  in  1870  with  her  baptism  into  the  Roman  Catho? 
lie  faith.  She  had  consulted  the  sympathetic  La  Farge 
in  her  perplexity,  and  her  conversion  was  effected  by 
his  friend,  the  saintly  Father  Hecker  of  the  Paulists, 
in  whose  church  she  was  received  as  a  proselyte.  She 
writes  of  herself  and  her  husband  in  this  connection — 
"The  subjects  which  interested  me  most  after 
1870  never  interested  him  at  all.  Until  then  we 
had  been  turning  our  intellectual  searchlights  in 
every  conceivable  direction.  At  that  time  mine 
steadied  on  its  proper  centre  and  veered  no  more." 


24 


LAKE  SANFORD 
THE  CENTURY  ASSOCIATION 
Signed  at  the  left,  dated  1870,  canvas,  25  inches  high,  40  inches  wide. 


And  indeed  Mrs.  Martin's  Catholicism  assumed 
the  intransigent  and  highly  mystical  turn  quite  usual 
with  converts.  These  churchly  interests  overbur? 
dened  her  two  novels  " Katharine"  and  "John  Van 
Alstyne's  Factory,"  expressing  themselves  as  well  in 
an  unfulfilled  intention  to  enter  a  convent  after  her 
husband  should  die,  and  in  a  futile  attempt  to  effect  his 
conversion  in  the  last  days.  It  would  he  easy  to  over* 
press  the  importance  of  this  rift.  The  essential  loyalty 
and  affection  of  the  two  persisted  through  the  many 
remaining  years  of  hardship  valiantly  shared.  But  it 
would  also  be  idle  to  deny  a  certain  impairment  of  the 
old  intellectual  comradeship.  Here  was  a  new  and 
refractory  element  that  had  never  been  in  the  bona. 
Here  was  a  kind  of  warrant  on  his  side  for  enlarge? 
ment  of  that  high  convivial  converse  which  at  the  best 
times  had  maintained  a  palpable  competition  with  the 
home  life  of  the  Homer  Martins.  If,  nevertheless,  the 
bond  held  firm,  much  ofthe  credit  was  hers.  No  reader 
of  the  "Reminiscence"  needs  to  be  assured  of  the  can* 
dor,  delicacy  and  strength  that  were  blended  in  the 
character  of  Elizabeth  Gilbert  Martin. 

I  may  have  dwelt  overmuch  upon  the  personal  side 
of  this  fascinating  pair,  but  without  some  hint  of  these 
human  interweavings  into  which  were  plied  the  very 
fibre  of  the  man,  how  could  I  hope  to  trace  a  course  in 
art,  the  fitfulness  of  which  corresponds  closely  with 
tangled  destinies  here  only  shadowed  forth? 


25 


PART  FOUR 


HOMER  MARTIN'S  painting  falls  into  fairly 
definite  periods  separated  by  experimental  inter = 
vals.  A  precocious  and  isolated  triumph  of  his  youth? 
fill  manner  is  ll,The  Old  Mill,"  dated  i860,  which 
betrays  perhaps  the  idyllic  influence  of  the  popular 
Thomas  Cole.  Some  ten  years  largely  devoted  to 
observations  and  sketching  in  the  Adirondacks  lead 
up  to  the  great  mountain  and  lake  views  of  the  early 
seventies.  The  period  opens  in  frank  emulation  of 
Kensett  and  ends  under  the  leading  of  Corot.  We 
may  terminate  what  is  really  the  first  period  with  the 
English  trip  of  1876,  which  brought  Martin  within 
reach  of  the  old  masters.  The  ensuing  pictures — very 
few  they  are — of  the  late  seventies  show  an  increased 
perfection  of  tone  and  a  freer  handling  without  much 
sacrifice  of  the  old  blithe  color,  while  the  beginnings 
of  a  more  intimate  and  less  scenic  vein  are  noted  in  a 
preference  for  brook  and  forest  subjects.  As  acolorist 
Martin  seems  to  me  at  his  best  in  this  time.  The 
Villerville^Honfleur  years,  1882=1886,  mark  a  con? 
siderable  change  in  his  style.  Now  first  he  feels  the 
appeal  of  a  humanized  soil.  The  old  thin  painting  and 
careful  definition  give  way  to  bold  and  synthetic  appli? 
cation  of  the  pigment.  Color  recedes  in  favor  of  tone. 
One  may  perhaps  suspect  the  influence  of  Boudin,  a 
native  of  Honfleur,  whose  pictures  might  be  seen  both 
there  and  in  the  Havre  gallery,  but  the  change  corre? 
sponds  to  an  inner  necessity,  is  merely  the  culminating 


achievement  of  a  life4ong  striving  towards  simplicity 
and  unity  of  effect.  In  France  itself  Martin  painted 
little,  but  saw  and  thought  much.  A  few  exceptional 
beach  and  meadow  scenes  were  favorable  to  the  trial 
.  of  the  new  method.  Its  successes  were  achieved  at 
home  in  his  ten  remaining  years.  New  York  and  St. 
Paul  saw  the  completion  of  his  great  French  pictures. 
To  the  old  Adirondack  and  Lake  Ontario  themes  the 
new  method  was  applied  triumphantly.  Thus  Mars 
tin's  life  ends  in  a  true  synthesis  of  all  his  artistic 
experience. 

With  few  exceptions  Homer  Martin's  pictures 
were  painted  long  after  the  sketches  or  observations 
on  which  they  are  based.  Prolonged  meditation  and 
selection  are  implied  even  by  his  early  canvases.  Let 
me  follow  briefly  the  storing  up  of  these  enduring  and 
slowly  germinating  impressions.  From  a  large  coh 
lection  of  sketches  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  William 
Macbeth  it  is  possible  to  trace  Martin's  movements 
through  the  summersof thesixties  and  early  seventies. 
Like  most  of  his  contemporaries,  he  devoted  himself 
to  wilderness  scenery  and  by  preference  to  mountains. 
The  Catskills,  the  Wliite  Mountains,  and  the  Adiron* 
dacks  successively  called  him.  To  bring  a  certain 
breadth  and  grandeur  out  of  the  confusion  of  this  raw 
sublimity  was  the  problem  to  which  he  set  his  mature 
ing  energies.  Church,  Bierstadt  and  Thomas  Moran 
were  working  along  the  same  lines.  But  the  effects 
which  they  sought  in  multiplication  of  minutely  ren= 
dered  detail,  Martin  achieved  from  the  first  by  arrange* 


27 


mcnt  and  selecti on .  He  had  the  Turneri an  instinct  not 
to  let  "Nature  put  him  out."  The  best  of  Martin's 
early  landscapes  is  unquestionably  "The  Old  Mill" 
which,  embodying  Catskill  reminiscences,  was 
painted  during  several  years  under  liberal  conditions 
forWm.  G.  Thomas,  Esq.,  of  Albany.  Itnowisinthe 
collection  of  Lyman  Mills,  Esq.,  of  Middleneld,  Conn. 
The  eye  goes  back  from  the  dusky  boulder^strewn 
waters  below  a  natural  fall,  over  the  ledge  where  the 
white  stream  bends  crisply,  and  beyond  forest  edges, 
to  a  vaporous  valley  whose  interlocking  hills  finally 
lose  themselves  in  a  misty  glow.  The  initial  contrast 
between  the  sombre  rigidity  of  the  foreground  and  the 
vague,  leafy  expanse  of  the  valley  is  happily  estab* 
lished.  The  flimsy  board  mill  hazardously  set  on  its 
declivity  gets  a  strange  emphasis  and  dignity.  The 
actual  painting  is  thin,  hard  and  monotonous.  At  that 
time  it  could  not  be  otherwise.  Yet  the  picture  was  a 
remarkable  performance  for  any  painter  of  twenty? 
four.  It  is  probably  the  best  landscape  that  had  been 
painted  in  America  up  to  that  date.  "The  Old  Mill" 
bears  in  Elizabeth  Davis's  and  Homer  Martin's  initials 
and  a  date  Jy  (January  or  July?)  i860,  a  souvenir  of 
that  moment  in  the  studio  so  delicately  recalled  by 
Mrs.  Martin.  Few  American  pictures  can  offer  sucn 
a  combination  of  artistic  and  personal  interest.  It 
seems  to  represent  a  happy  culmination  in  life  and  art 
of  a  period  chiefly  idyllic.  For  years  Martin  was  to 
cultivate  a  more  austere  muse. 

There  is  a  charming  pencil  sketch  of  an  elm  by  a 

28 


stone  wall  made  at  Salisbury,  Conn.,  in  July,  1861, 
about  a  fortnight  after  his  marriage.  The  middle  of 
August  found  him  on  the  Lower  Saranac,  the  end  of 
the  month  on  the  Upper  Saranac.  It  was  probably  his 
first  trip  to  the  heart  of  the  Adirondacks,  and  it  in* 
volved  slow  progresses,  most  satisfactory  to  a 
sketcher,  on  foot  or  by  rowboat  or  stage.  His  Acad= 
emy  picture  of  1861  was  called  "Among  the  Lake 
George  Hills,"  apparently  a  reminiscence  of  the  brief 
honeymoon  visit  at  Fort  Ann.  The  new  Adirondack 
impressions  worked  tardily.  It  was  several  years 
before  he  settled  down  to  what  was  to  be  a  lifelong 
theme.  Next  summer,  1862,  we  find  him  actively 
sketching  in  the  Gorham  region  amid  the  boldest 
scenery  of  the  White  Mountains.  His  pencil  point 
searches  accurately  the  complicated  forms  of  falling 
water,  of  rocky  torrent  beds,  and  of  tangled  uprooted 
trees.  The  next  summer  finds  him  in  the  same  region 
exploring  the  wilderness  ravine  of  the  Wild  River. 
Again  it  was  several  years  before  these  "White 
Mountain  impressions  eventuated  in  some  of  his 
best  early  pictures.  From  1864  to  1869  inclusive 
he  seems  to  have  spent  all  his  summers  in  the 
Adirondacks,  which  he  explored  widely.  We  find 
him  at  various  times  in  the  gentle  river  region,  then 
unscathed  by  forest  fires,  about  Long  Lake,  the  Rac* 
quette  River  and  the  Tuppers ;  among  the  gorges  of 
the  Ausable  Lakes,  and  at  Indian  Pass.  Then  the  easy 
levels  about  the  lower  Ausable  Valley  and  the  gra* 
cious  splendors  of  the  Lake  Placid  country  engaged 


29 


his  pencil.  His  favorite  sketching  ground  and  the 
region  that  left  the  deepest  impress  on  his  memory 
seems  to  have  been  the  forest=bound  lakes  at  the 
headwaters  of  the  Hudson  about  Tahawus.  Distant 
glimpses  of  the  bleak  levels  of  Lake  Sanford,  Lake 
Henderson  and  Elk  Lake  are  the  themes  of  some  of  the 
best  early  pictures.  On  the  way  to  and  from  his  be= 
loved  Adirondacks  he  often  looked  down  the  wide 
ravines  to  the  expanse  of  Lake  Champlain  with  the 
blue  defile  of  the  Vermont  mountains  meeting  the  far* 
away  clouds.  Such  a  reminiscence  inspired  one  ofthe 
finest  of  his  early  pictures,  painted  about  1872  and  still 
m  the  possession  ofhis  friend  W.  C.  Brownell. 

Martin's  whereabouts  in  the  summer  of  1870  I  have 
been  unable  to  trace.  With  1871  came  an  unexpected 
widening  of  his  field.  The  financier  Jay  Cooke  had 
organized  a  tour  for  certain  German  bankers  who 
were  expected  to  finance  the  Northern  Pacific.  Mars 
tin,  probably  quite  as  much  in  his  capacity  as  an  enter* 
taining  person  as  otherwise,  was  invited.  He  is  said 
to  have  done  a  big  picture  of  the  new  town  of  Duluth 
which  sorely  displeased  his  promoter  patron.  Martin 
painted  the  group  of  shanties  he  saw,  making  them 
quite  insignificant  amid  the  surrounding  spaces  of  for* 
est  and  lake.  Jay  Cooke  naturally  wished  some  sug* 
gestion  of  the  future  metropolitan  grandeurs  of  his 
terminal  city.  The  picture  has  disappeared,  but  I 
believe  we  may  have  the  attenuated  ghost  of  it  in  a 
rude  engraving  of  Duluth  reproduced  in  Dr.  Ober* 
holtzer's  excellent  biography  of  Jay  Cooke.    It  is 

3° 


matter  of  history  that  trie  German  bankers,  perhaps 
looking  at  the  then  Duluth  with  Homer  Martin's  diss 
interested  eyes,  did  not  finance  the  Northern  Pacific. 

In  the  early  autumn  of  1872  Martin  accompanied  a 
railroad  survey  to  Cumberland  Gap,  Ky.,  later  going 
over  alone  into  the  Smoky  Mountains  of  North  Caro* 
lina.  He  writes  Mosher  of  the  primitive  customs  of 
the  mountaineers — "When  I  return  I  will  tell  you 
how  we  all  slept  in  one  room  in  the  mountains  of  Ken* 
tucky  and  how  the  women  pretended  to  cover  their 
eyes  with  their  fingers,  just  to  put  on  airs  and  seem 
modest  before  city  people.  What  will  they  do  when 
the  railroad  introduces  more  conventionalities  ?"  The 
only  record  of  this  excursion  is  a  prim  steel  engraving 
by  R.  Hinshelwood,  in  "Picturesque  America,'  vol* 
ume  two.  The  original  picture  of  the  Smoky  Moun* 
tains  with  a  tiny  lake  nestling  amid  the  foothills  of  the 
great  range  must  have  been  among  the  most  impres? 
sive  of  Martin's  early  works.  It  must  have  been  in 
1873  *kat  ^e  visited  the  melancholy  sand  dunes  of  Lake 
Ontario,  for  the  first  and  one  of  the  best  pictures  on 
this  theme  is  the  little  canvas  dated  1874  in  Mont* 
gomery  Schuyler's  possession.  It  was  a  kind  of  scenery 
that  deeply  appealed  to  Martin,  and  after  his  art  had 
been  subtilized  by  the  French  sojourn,  he  returned 
several  times,  and  most  successfully  to  these  Lake 
Ontario  themes.  The  experience  of  this  summer  fur* 
thered  a  sombre,  elegiac  taste  that  was  to  find  its  fulfil, 
ment  some  twenty  years  and  more  later  at  the  estuary 
of  the  Seine  and  on  the  moors  of  Newport. 


The  sketching  habits  of  Homer  Martin  varied 
greatly  as  he  advanced.  Until  about  1876  he  worked 
with  a  hard  pencil  on  large  sheets  of  grey  paper,  about 
twelve  by  twenty  inches.  Most  of  his  Adirondack 
and  White  Mountain  studies  are  of  this  sort,  and  they 
would  doubtless  provoke  the  pity  or  the  derision  of  a 
modern  art  student,  so  neglectful  are  these  sketches  of 
mass,  values,  and  all  that  we  look  for  today.  There  is 
nothing  but  the  thin,  firm  contour  embracing  impar* 
tially  far  and  near  objects.  Occasionally  there  is  a 
timid  indication  of  darker  masses  in  middle  distance, 
often  the  foreground  detail  of  rock  or  tree  forms  is  deli* 
cately  and  vigorously  asserted  with  the  point.  More 
rarely  a  dab  of white  tells  where  the  sun  strikes  reflect? 
ing  water  or  mountain  top.  Yet  these  thin,  oldfash* 
ioned  studies  are  not  quite  negligible.  Each  is  a  careful 
attempt  at  simplification  and  arrangement,  each  may 
be  regarded  as  a  cartoon  for  a  future  painting.  In  short, 
Homer  Martin  reversed  the  common  procedure  of 
sketching  details  and  making  compositions  in  the  stu= 
dio.  His  compositions  he  sought  out  of  doors  and 
apparently  he  trusted  his  memory  for  details.  There 
are  a  few  early  sketches  of  boulders  and  fallen  trees 
in  torrent  beds  and  a  few  remarkable  drawings  of 
tangled  forest  interiors,  but  such  minute  exercises 
seem  to  have  been  rare.  His  sketches,  as  we  have 
seen,  are  already  pictorial;  he  approaches  nature 
through  style. 

During  this  early  period  he  rarely  sketched  in 
color,  and  the  memory  of  forms  and  colors  implied  in 


32 


SPRING  MORNING 
COLLECTION  OF  MONTGOMERY  SCHUYLER 
Signed  at  the  left,  dated  1875,  canvas,  12  inches  high,  20  inches  wide. 


LAKE  CHAMPLAIN 
OWNED  BY  WILLIAM  C.  BROWNELL 
Canvas,  30  inches  high,  50  inches  wide. 


the  canvases  of  the  late  sixties  and  early  seventies  is 
indeed  extraordinary. 

To  Whistler  and  Albert  Moore,  with  whom 
Martin  consorted  in  London  in  1876,  this  method  of 
working  with  the  pencil  point  must  have  seemed 
grotesquely  archaic.  From  this  time  Martin  begins 
to  use  charcoal.  Water  color  he  had  occasionally 
employed  from  the  first,  and  by  the  late  seventies 
and  the  Villerville  time  it  becomes  a  favorite  me* 
dium.  In  it  he  attained  great  freshness  and  direct 
ness,  and  a  handful  of  the  aquarelles  made  on  the 
Saguenay  and  in  Normandy  must  count  among  his 
most  charming  works.  The  pictorial  quality  is  still 
strong  in  these  swift  notes.  His  composition  sketches 
of  the  late  seventies  and  the  eighties  are  mere  char= 
coal  rubbings  in  pocket  sketch  books.  The  emphasis 
is  no  longer  upon  contour  but  upon  mass  and  light 
and  dark.  A  number  of  these  studies  are  reproduced 
in  Mrs.  Martin's  "Reminiscence."  They  are  less  re? 
markable  instrinsically  than  as  evidence  of  Martin's 
quite  portentous  visual  memory,  so  slight  they  seem  in 
comparison  with  the  corresponding  finished  pictures. 

Perhaps  the  finest  canvases  of  the  early  New 
York  period  are  "Lake  Sanford,"  1870,  owned  by 
the  Century  Club,  and  "Lake  Champlain,"  painted 
about  1872,  in  the  collection  of  W.  C.  Brownell. 
Montgomery  Schuyler  has  the  first  version  of  "Sand 
Dunes,  Lake  Ontario,"  dated  1874,  and  a  deliciously 
light  little  study  of  the  next  year,  betraying  the  influx 
ence  of  Corot,  and  called  "Spring  Morning."  To  this 


33 


list  one  might  add  the  stately  "  Mount  Jefferson  and 
Adams"  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum,  but  this  fine 
canvas  was  considerably  repainted  long  after  the  date 
it  bears,  1868.  All  the  pictures  of  the  early  seventies 
have  common  qualities  of  fine  arrangement  and 
color,  and  common  defects  of  a  manipulation  rather 
thin  and  slow.  But  in  the  essentials  of  simplicty  and 
spaciousness  such  a  picture  as  "Lake  Sanford"  is 
already  a  masterpiece.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  any 
superior  felicity  of  mere  handling,  such  as  we  note 
for  example  in  the  quite  similar  composition  of  thirty 
years  later,  "Adirondack  Scenery,"  could  really  im? 
prove  this  early  picture.  Nothing  could  be  finer  than 
the  heave  of  the  foreground  ledge  and  the  nervous 
drawing  of  its  firesblasted  spruces,  than  the  stretch  of 
forest,  far  below  and  quite  endless,  holding  a  bleak 
lake  in  its  cold  embrace  and  finally  losing  itself 
where  grey  drenched  clouds  and  the  evening  reek 
from  far  mountain  sides  blend  and  efface  the  sky 
line.  The  picture  conveys  the  peculiar  melancholy 
of  those  northern  forests  ravaged  by  fire  and  tempest, 
by  the  ax  and  by  their  own  decay.  But  the  scene 
yields  also  the  tense  exhilaration  proper  to  vast  unin? 
habited  spaces,  and  more  specifically,  is  full  of  the 
very  chill  that  rises  from  these  upland  forest  lakes  at 
nightfall.  A  picture  of  this  sort  should  not  be  meas= 
ured  by  the  minor  dexterities.  It  is  neither  more  nor 
less  clever  than  a  good  Ruysdael  and  it  has  much  of 
the  sober  and  studied  Tightness  of  his  early  Rhine 
subiects. 


34 


The  joyous  counterpart  to  this  pensive  master* 
piece  is  Mr.  BrownelTs  "Lake  Cnamplain"  which 
was  painted  towards  1872.  The  glory  of  the  picture 
is  in  the  distance  which  the  reproduction  largely 
misses.  Below  a  radiant  blue  sky,  a  file  of  creamy 
clouds  settles  down  upon  the  intensely  blue  range  of 
the  distant  Vermont  Mountains.  Miles  nearer,  the 
further  shore  is  olive  green.  An  expanse  of  lake  re* 
fleets  and  fuses  opalescently  these  hues  of  sky  and 
distant  shore.  Near  at  hand  a  gracious  valley  de* 
scends  and  broadens  to  frame  the  lustrous  water.  A 
sapling  fringe,  outcropping  ledges,  and  fallen  timber 
diversify  the  foreground.  Its  colors  are  silvery  greys 
with  touches  of  deep  green.  Much  of  this  nearer 
work  recalls  the  early  manner  of  Corot,  whose  later 
feathery  silveryness  has  influenced  the  treatment  of 
the  foliage.  But  the  color  has  a  blitheness  and  candor 
quite  definitely  Martin's  own.  There  is  still  nothing 
like  formula  or  decorative  artifice.  The  rare  master* 
pieces  of  this  native  type  have  a  beauty  of  color  and 
an  integrity  of  draughtsmanship  not  always  present 
in  the  more  famous  elegiac  compositions  that  grew 
out  of  the  years  in  Normandy. 

The  influences  under  which  Homer  Martin  ma* 
tured  may  be  inferred  from  these  two  pictures.  George 
Boughton,  in  the  late  fifties,  brought  over  to  Albany  a 
small  picture  by  Corot.  It  was  admired  by  his  artist 
friends,  and  likely  enough  Martin's  naturally  just 
sense  of  arrangement  was  confirmed  by  this  new 
enthusiasm.   Sometime  later  Launt  Thompson  met 


35 


Corot  atVille  cTAvray  and  afterwards  remarked  to 
one  of  Martin's  friends  that  he  painted  as  if  he  had 
been  a  pupil  of  Corot.  The  saying  reached  Martin 
tardily  and  he  complained  whimsically,  "Why  didn't 
Thompson  tell  me  that  when  it  would  have  done  me 
good?"  About  1870  and  later  the  New  York  dealers 
were  beginning  to  force  the  men  of  1830  upon  a  reluc? 
tant  public.  At  this  time  Martin  doubtless  saw  many 
fine  examples  of  his  favorite  painter.  But  it  would  be 
easy  to  exaggerate  this  influence.  Martin  kept  his 
love  of  full  color,  never  merging  it  completely  in  tone. 
What  he  drew  from  Corot  was  chiefly  an  increased 
sense  for  elegance  and  clarity,  and  such  fastidious; 
ness  was  innate.  One  of  his  few  recorded  artistic 
opinions,  he  was  a  man  who  rarely  talked  shop,  is 
a  condemnation  of  Turner  for  presuming  to  hang 
two  ofhis  canvases  alongside  Claude's  incomparable 
"Seaport."  This  observation  was  made  in  the  Na= 
tional  Gallery  as  late  as  1892,  and  it  epitomizes  the 
esthetic  faith  of  a  lifetime.  From  what  was  inchoate, 
fussy,  or  sensational,  Martin  ever  shrunk.  He  was 
born  a  classicist,  in  a  manner  a  Virgilian,  and  nature 
ally  loved  the  measured  serenity  of  such  masters  as 
Claude  and  Corot. 

But  a  stronger  leading  came  from  a  far  humbler 
quarter.  John  F.  Kensett  is  today  hardly  the  shadow 
of  a  name ;  in  the  sixties  and  early  seventies  he  lorded 
it  affably  among  the  acknowledged  giants  of  the 
Hudson  River  School.  There  are  still  good  old 
houses  in  New  York  that  boast  their  dozens  of  Kens 


36 


setts.  In  some  unmentioned  limbo  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  keeps  a  full  score.  The  pictures  left  in  his 
studio  fetched  something  more  than  150,000  dollars 
after  his  death,  in  1873.  And  relatively  to  his  con? 
temporaries  he  deserved  his  vogue.  Alone  among 
them  he  realized  that  a  landscape  is  neither  an  arbore* 
turn  nor  a  topographical  display.  He  had  inklings  of 
the  principle  of  harmony  in  color  that  runs  through 
nature.  Some  of  the  rarer  hues  of  sky  and  water  he 
at  least  saw  and  attempted  to  capture.  Moreover  he 
knew  something  of  the  value  of  silhouette,  of  the 
placing  of  the  larger  masses.  Then  he  respected  the 
luminous  quality  of  virgin  expanses  of  pigment.  He 
never  reduced  color  to  mud  on  his  palette  nor  tor? 
tured  it  to  dullness  on  the  canvas.  His  best  canvases 
deserve  Constable  s  lefthanded  compliment  to  Tur* 
ner:  they  look  like  big  water  colors.  W.  C.  Brow* 
nell  finds  to  praise  in  Kensetts  landscapes  "a  certain 
wholesomeness,  and  even  a  soft  vivacity  that  set 
them  in  advance  of  most  work  that  was  contempor* 
ary  with  them,  and  enabled  them  to  be  of  a  real 
advantage  at  the  time  when  their  vogue  was  great* 
est."  Kensett  possessed  a  thin  but  authentic  poet's 
vein  quite  exceptional  in  his  day  and  rightly  treas* 
ured.  From  the  prevailing  vices  of  achromatism  and 
small  realism  he  was  completely  free.  He  was  the 
only  one  of  the  older  artists  who  was  worth  imitating, 
and  Homer  Martin  was  about  the  only  painter  intelli? 
gent  enough  to  grasp  that  fact.  The  fine  Martins  of  the 
early  seventies  are  like  glorified  Kensetts,  Kensetts 


37 


with  the  addition  of  nerve,  substance,  and  higher 
seriousness.  Once  more  we  see  how  truly  Martin's 
work  was  merely  the  fulfilling  in  a  more  critical 
spirit  of  the  finer  part  of  our  national  tradition. 

As  early  as  1867,  in  the  second  edition  of  -The 
Book  of  the  Artists,"  the  amiable  Henry  T.  Tucker* 
man  had  found  space  to  note  in  a  single  line  the 
promise  of  Martin's  lake  scenes.  Other  recognition 
was  of  the  scantiest  in  these  early  years,  but  in  1874 
he  was  elected  an  Academician.  It  was  not  much  of 
an  honor  but  it  was  at  least  the  best  the  country  then 
afforded.  To  any  man  but  Martin  it  would  have 
meant  financial  success.  Being  the  Ishmaelite  he 
was,  he  struggled  along  under  an  increasing  load — 
his  two  boys  grew  faster  than  sales  and  prices — until 
in  his  fortieth  year  came  an  unexpected  respite. 

PART  FIVE 

IN  1876  Homer  Martin  went  to  England  and 
France  with  his  friend  Dr.  Jacob  S.  Mosher.  The 
trip  included  a  visit  to  Barbizon,  but  Millet  and  Rous* 
seau  were  already  gone.  Some  "  pencilling s  at  Saint? 
Cloud,"  mentioned  by  Mrs.  Martin,  indicate  a  pil* 
grimage  to  the  favorite  sketching  ground  of  Corot. 
The  holiday  included  a  glimpse  of  Holland  and  possi* 
bly  of  Belgium.  Most  of  the  time  was  spent  in 
England  in  close  intimacy  with  Whistler.  The  Pen? 
nells  record  with  tantalizing  brevity  Whistler's  habit 
of  dining  at  "a  cheap  French  restaurant  good  of  its 
kind,  with  Albert  Moore  and  Homer  Martin,  a  man 


38 


in  whom  he  delighted."  It  was  the  year  before  the 
Ruskin  outburst,  and  many  of  the  soon  to  he  notori* 
ous  and  now  famous  nocturnes  were  in  the  Lindsay 
Row  studio,  hut  Martin's  sturdiness  prevented  his 
heing  drawn  into  a  mode  which  he  warmly  admired. 
Unhappily  no  record  survives  of  the  talk  of  the  three 
friends.  Nor  do  we  know  what  artistic  credentials 
m  the  way  of  pictures  Martin  brought  over  with 
him.  There  is  a  hint  of  an  exhibition  and  of  favor* 
able  press  notices  which  I  have  not  been  able  to 
verify.  Even  more  welcome  would  be  some  intima? 
tion  of  Martin's  reaction  to  old  painting  in  the  Na? 
tional  Gallery  and  the  Louvre,  and  here  again  is  only 
silence.  A  fine  canvas,  "Richmond  on  Thames," 
painted  after  his  return,  suggests  in  its  beautiful  rus* 
sets  and  silvers  and  in  a  certain  demureness  the  close 
scrutiny  of  Constable.  But  in  the  main  Homer  Mar* 
tin's  art  remained  unperturbed  by  these  crowding 
new  impressions.  Indeed  it  is  likely  that  he  fre* 
quented  the  cheap  French  restaurant  and  similar 
resorts  "good  of  their  kind"  in  preference  to  the  gah 
leries  and  studios.  He  disliked  the  formal  symmetry 
of  new  Paris  and  adored  the  casual  picturesqueness 
of  London.  It  looked  he  used  to  say, 1 '  as  if  it  had  been 
built  by  individuals  at  different  times." 

By  the  middle  of  December,  1876,  as  we  learn 
from  a  letter  to  Mosher,  Martin  had  returned  to 
New  York  very  hard  up,  having  been  away  nearly 
the  whole  year.  Apparently  the  pictures,  including 
the  splendid  "Lake  Sanford,"  which  he  exhibited  at 


39 


the  Centennial  exhibition,  Philadelphia,  had  failed  to 
keep  him  in  memory,  nor  had  absence  improved  his 
vogue.  It  was  hard  to  take  hold  again.  He  was  more 
than  a  year  in  finishing  a  large  picture  of  Windsor 
Castle  for  Dr.  Mosher.  It  is  still  in  the  possession  of 
his  son,  Dr.  Montgomery  Mosher,  of  Albany,  New 
York,  and  is  the  most  important  souvenir  of  Martin's 
English  days.  Martin  liked  it,  for,  writing  December 
5th,  1877,  he  begged  it  for  exhibition  in  the  following 
terms — 

"Next  Sat  night,  dear  Mosher  is  meeting  night 
at  the  Century  at  which  I  would  like  to  make  an 
exhibition  of  your  picture  and  yourself— both  in  a 
highly  varnished  condition." 

He  was  one  of  the  few  Academicians  asked  to  join 
the  Society  of  American  Artists  in  1877.  Rather  few 
of  his  pictures  can  with  certainty  be  dated  in  the 
late  seventies,  but  his  exhibition  titles  suggest  a  more 
intimate  sort  of  landscape,  forest  interiors  and  brook 
scenes,  while  a  few  fine  canvases  dated  1880  and  the 
next  year  show  that  through  this  interval  his  art 
had  notably  progressed.  There  is  a  brook  scene 
dated  1881,  in  a  private  collection,  which  catches  all 
the  mystery  of  filtering  light,  and  presents  the  most 
beautiful  and  summary  indications  for  tangling 
weeds,  underbrush,  moving  water,  and  lichened 
venerable  boulders.  As  compared  with  the  pictures 
of  only  a  few  years  earlier  the  touch  is  loose,  the  vari? 
ety  of  texture  remarkable.  The  little  world  below 
the  leaf  canopy  has  its  specific  and  palpable  atmos* 


40 


ANDANTE  I  FIFTH  SYMPHONY 
IN  A  PRIVATE  COLLECTION 
Signed  and  dated  1880,  canvas,  20  inches  high,  30  inches  wide. 


phere,  to  which  is  sacrificed  enumeration  of  detail 
and  something  of  precision. 

A  more  discreet  mastery  of  these  new  expedients 
is  revealed  in  the  admirable  canvas  of  1880,  "An* 
dante:  Fifth  Symphony."  A  forest  brook  broadens 
into  a  shallow  pool  to  which  vague  reflections  of 
rocks  and  trees  and  broken  sky  lend  depth  and  mys* 
tery.  In  the  upper  vista,  boulders  glint  in  the  half 
light  before  a  screen  of  misty  foliage.  The  rock? 
rimmed  bounds  of  the  pool  and  some  foreground 
weeds  are  accented  with  great  vigor,  while  every* 
thing  in  the  forest  above  is  soft  and  evanescent.  Tree 
trunks  loom  spectrally  before  a  general  forest  gloom 
which  is  enlivened  by  the  scarlet  flash  of  a  precox 
ciously  autumnal  maple.  The  general  color  is  extraor* 
dinarily  modulated  greys  qualified  by  broad  touches 
of  russet  and  green.  In  its  contrasts  of  preciseness 
and  mystery  the  picture  obeys  the  Japanese  law  that 
every  composition  must  be  clearly  divided  into  a 
masculine  and  a  feminine  part.  And  it  should  be 
noted  that  the  exceedingly  delicate  painting  of  the 
forest  is  perfectly  lucid.  The  spectator  who  is  a 
woodsman  will  have  no  difficulty  in  reading  these 
subtle  indications  quite  literally  as  pine,  maple  or 
poplar.  While  the  painting  is  very  thin,  the  manipu* 
lation  is  most  skillful  and  varied.  Perfect  tone  is 
achieved  without  the  sacrifice  of  local  color.  The 
picture  exemplifies  a  momentary  perfection,  the  high 
point  in  the  delicate  naturalism  in  which  Martin  had 
begun.  The  analogy  of  the  stream  broadening  amid 

41 


• 


forest  loveliness  to  the  great  And  ante  is  by  no  means 
fanciful.  In  some  ways  the  picture  is  more  attractive 
than  his  more  highly  prized  later  work  with  its 
broader  manipulation  of  paint  and  its  more  convene 
tionally  asserted  tone.  I  sometimes  wonder  what 
would  have  happened  had  the  public  seen  fit  to  sup; 
port  work  of  this  excellence  and  made  it  possible  for 
Homer  Martin  to  reach  his  full  development  in  his 
own  land.  What  is  certain  is  that  all  the  expedients 
and  ideals  which  characterize  the  French  period  are 
clearly  enough  foreshadowed  in  this  canvas  of  1880. 
The  last  phase  of  Homer  Martin  is  less  exotic  than  it 
seems. 

No  complete  record  of  Homer  Martin's  move; 
ments  in  the  years  from  1877  to  1881  can  be  made. 
Some  time  in  1878  he  was  sketching  at  Concord  un; 
aer  the  guidance  of  Frank  B.  Sanborn  who  still  recalls 
Martin's  agreeable  manners  and  the  somewhat  gro; 
tesque  figure  he  cut  in  the  evening  dress  that  was 
scrupulously  worn  at  all  Concord  teas  and  dinners. 
' 1  Scribner's  Monthly"  for  February,  1879,  presents 
the  fruits  of  this  expedition  in  certain  woodcut  illus; 
trations  to  Mr.  Sanborn's  article  ""The  Homes  and 
Haunts  of  Emerson."  The  sketches  surely  attribute 
able  to  Martin  are  the  fine  designs.  "Walden  Pond," 
"Concord  from  Lee's  Hill,"  "Graves  of  Hawthorne 
andThoreau,"and  the  less  interesting  drawing  of  the 
"Old  Manse."  The  original  drawings  have  disap; 
peared,  the  best  impressions  of  the  cuts  may  be  seen 
in  Mr.  Sanborn's  book  "Homes  and  Haunts  of  the 

42 


Elder  Poets, "  which  perhaps  contains  other  illustra? 
tions  from  Martin's  hand.  It  was  a  kind  of  task  that 
he  disliked — rather  foolishly  thinking  it  beneath  his 
dignity  as  an  artist — and  in  which  he  did  not  shine. 
Still  the  chance  of  his  having  done  this  commission 
acceptably  influenced  his  whole  later  life.  It  was  as 
an  illustrator  that  he  undertook  the  trip  which  led  to 
the  years  in  Normandy. 

In  the  summer  of  1879  ^e  was  t^ie  guc^  °£  Dr. 
D.  M.  Stimson  in  a  boating  trip  on  the  lower  St. 
Lawrence  and  Saguenay.  There  remain  a  few  fine 
sketches  in  charcoal  and  in  water  color,  with  a  sheaf 
of  drier  pencil  sketches  of  Quebec,  which  may  have 
been  intended  for  illustration.  The  water  colors  of 
this  year  show  that  partial  subordination  of  frank 
color  to  tone  which  we  have  already  noticed  in  the 
paintings  of  a  year  or  two  later.  If  Mrs.  Martin  is 
right  in  supposing  one  of  the  finest  Newport  land* 
scapes  to  have  been  painted  in  England  in  1881  or 
1882,  we  may  safely  set  Martin's  first  studies  on  the 
Newport  moors  in  the  late  seventies.  For  the  rest, 
he  was  always  a  great  figure  in  the  Century  Club, 
then  in  its  old  East  Fifteenth  Street  house,  while  the 
proverbial  wolf  continued  as  of  yore  to  keep  the 
Martin  family  well  within  ear  and  eyeshot. 


part  six 


THERE  is  an  ironic  principle  by  which  our  major 
opportunities  in  life  are  often  determined  by  our 
minor  capacities.  One  is  a  lawyer  because  some  cas* 


43 


ual  paradox  was  heard  at  the  right  or  the  wrong  time, 
a  clergyman  on  the  strength  of  an  exceptional  sally  in 
dialectic,  a  diplomat  because  one's  boots,  gloves,  and 
conversation  opportunely  pleased  some  great  lady. 
Our  inner  and  intimate  impulsions  we  rarely  are  free 
to  obey.  Practically  we  do  what  it  suits  the 
tary  convenience  of  somebody  or  other  to  believe  we 
are  fit  for.  So  when  in  October,  1881 ,  Homer  Martin 
sailed  for  a  long  visit  to  England  he  went  not  as  one  of 
the  foremost  landscape  painters  of  his  time  but  as  a 
tolerable  illustrator  of  literary  sites.  He  was  com* 
missioned  by  the  "Century  Magazine"  to  sketch  in 
George  Eliot's  Warwickshire,  and  his  needs  did  not 
permit  him  to  decline  an  uncongenial  task.  In  London 
he  renewed  the  old  friendship  with  Whistler  and  had 
the  freedom  of  the  famous  yellow  studio  at  Chelsea. 
Being  once  asked  to  criticize  its  very  perfect  appoint* 
ments,  he  remarked  the  ab  sence  of  scissors.  'When 
asked  What  for  ?  he  performed  an  expressive  panto? 
mime  with  his  fingers  upon  the  edge  of  a  much  frayed 
cuff.  Though  become  a  celebrity  of  the  first  water, 
"•Jimmy"  was  still  the  best  of  comrades.  The  poet 
W.  E.  Henley,  too,  was  an  intimate.  Yet  Martin 
seems  to  have  passed  his  first  eight  months  in  England 
in  frequent  lethargy  and  despondency.  The  Edmund 
Gosses,  at  whose  home  he  often  visited,  were  im* 
pressed  by  the  discrepancy  between  his  sordid  appear* 
ance  and  evident  distinction.  To  Mr.  Gosse  he  seemed 
"muffled"  and  quite  discouraged.  In  any  case  almost 
no  work  was  done,  and  the  illustrations  lagged.  Mrs. 


44 


Martin's  advent  in  July,  1882,  may  nave  been  some* 
what  in  the  nature  of  a  relief  expedition.  She  was 
promptly  taken  to  see  "Jimmy"  whose  fantastic  pose 
and  setting  reduced  her  to  silence,  and  the  visit  was 
not  repeated. 

After  her  coming,  the  sketches  of  "George- Eliot's 
Country"  were  quickly  dispatched.  Accompanied 
by  Rose  C.  Kingsley's  text  they  may  be  seen  in  the 
"Century"  Vol.  xxx  (1885)  where  they  seem  indeed 
a  slight  occasion  for  a  notable  shift  in  Homer  Martin's 
fate.  Alfred  Parsons's  drawings  for  the  same  article 
are  distinguished  both  by  their  blither  mood  and  by 
his  monogram.  It  was  the  intention  of  the  Martins 
to  return  in  the  Autumn  of  1882,  but  the  chance  of 
an  attractive  invitation  to  Normandy  and  of  an  old 
friend  as  traveling  companion  took  them  across  the 
channel  to  Honfleur.  Mrs.  Martin  records  her  thrill 
when  she  awoke  to  see  the  tawny  cliffs  of  the  Con* 
queror's  port.  Their  objective  was  the  hospitable 
thatched  farmhouse  at  Pennedepie  occupied  by  WiL= 
liam  J.  Hennessy  and  his  wife.  Hennessy  was  an  old 
friend.  Successful  both  as  painter  and  illustrator,  he 
was  a  pioneer  of  that  harmless  type  of  American  tal= 
ent  which  seeks  its  ease  and  local  color  abroad.  Be? 
sides,  he  was  a  neighborly  person  and  a  celebrity  in 
the  region. 

What  had  begun  as  a  brief  visit  led  to  more  than 
four  years  of  work  and  play  in  Normandy.  By  the 
winter  of  1882  the  Martins  were  comfortably  settled 
at  Villerville,  near  Mme.  Cornu's  hotel  where  excel* 


45 


lent  lunches  and  dinners  were  provided  on  quite  ins 
definite  credit.  Barring  debt,  which  was  after  all  their 
chronic  condition,  it  was  a  time  of  uncommon  ease 
and  of  closer  companionship.  Their  French  acquaint^ 
ances  were  unfailing  in  kindness.  Pleasant  American 
and  English  friends  were  often  staying  or  visiting  at 
this  picturesque  village.  C.  S.  Rinehart,  whose  Paris 
studio  was  headquarters  for  Martin  in  his  occasional 
runs  to  town,  summered  at Villerville  with  his  family. 
The  elder  Forbes*Robertsons  had  a  villa  there.  Old 
American  friends  like  the  Brownells  halted  and  loved 
the  peace  and  beauty  of  the  place.  There  was  a  cons 
stant  coming  and  going  of  odd,  diverting  people,  some 
of  whom  still  live  quaintly  in  Mrs.  Martin's  "  Remi= 
niscence."  It  was  a  life  both  serene  and  sufficiently 
varied.  What  the  appeal  of  the  soft  beauty  of  the 
place  was  to  Homer  Martin  we  may  best  realize  in 
the  delightful  sketch  of  Villerville  which  his  wife 
contributed  to  the  "Catholic  World"  of  February 
1884.  As  motto  she  chose  the  line 

"  What  little  town  by  rft>er  or  sea  shore" 

from  Keats's  "Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn."  Her  husband, 
on  persuasion,  would  recite  this  and  other  odes  of  the 
poet.  Observing  that  in  France,  unlike  America, 
there  is  no  gulf  between  figure  painting  and  land? 
scape,  she  dwells  upon  the  appeal  of  a  soil  immemori* 
ally  inhabited. 
"Here  all  is  congruous — occupation,  costume,  atti* 
tude ;  nay  as  one  leaves  the  precincts  of  the  town 

46 


and  strolls  through  lane  or  byway,  even  the  nouses 
and  steep*roofed  barns  fit  into  the  landscape  as 
naturally  and  harmoniously  as  the  trees,  the 
fluence  of  whose  graceful  forms  seems,  indeed,  to 
have  sunk  into  the  souls  of  their  rustic  architects." 
With  such  impressions  overwhelming  him  it  is  sigs 
nificant  that  Martin,  who  was  a  competent  draughts* 
man  of  the  ngure,  in  the  work  of  Norman  inspiration 
stops  usually  with  mere  symbo  Is  of  hab  itation.  In 
two  or  three  pictures  we  have  mussel  gatherers  stride 
ing  over  twilight  sands,  but  usually  there  are  mere 
hints  of  villages  seen  down  the  "water  lanes"  or 
across  the  river,  or  at  most  some  collective  token  of 
man's  tenure,  like  the  ivysgrown  Church  of  Crique* 
boeuf  or  an  old  manor  mouldering  amid  funereal  neg* 
lected  poplars.  So  much  Martin  conceded  to  the  spirit 
of  the  place,  but  to  the  end  he  preferred  to  be  alone 
with  nature,  and  some  of  the  latest  pictures  done  after 
his  return  to  America  merit  Dennett's  comment  upon 
the  early  work  in  looking  as  if  no  one  but  God  and 
the  painter  had  seen  them. 

What  Villerville  meant  in  the  way  of  cultivating 
a  sense  of  color  and  of  atmospheric  gradation  already 
keen  and  delicate,  may  again  best  be  gathered  from 
Mrs.  Martin's  graceful  phrases: 

"All  this  external  loveliness  which  helps  to 
endear  their  native  soil  to  men  is  here  in  the  full  of 
perfection — The  blue  sea  stretching  to  the  horizon 
or  limited  by  the  rosy  gray  of  headlands  and  the 
purple  of  distant  shores;  the  swell  of  sunny  up* 

47 


lands ;  the  spread  of  flowery  meadows ;  the  shad  ow 
of  graceful  trees;  the  generous  fields  from  which 
the  peasants  further  inland  draw  the  fruits  and 
grains  which  supplement  a  never=failing  harvest 
from  the  deep,  over  all  the  wide^arching,  grey 
blueness  of  the  Norman  sky." 
The  whole  article  is  truly,  as  Mr.  Brownell  said 
when  he  read  the  manuscript,  a  Homer  Martin  land* 
scape  in  words.  I  cannot  wonder  that  certain  editors 
preferred  the  text  to  the  rather  slight  sketches  illus* 
trating  it,  which  indeed  were  never  published.  I 
would  gladly  quote  at  length  the  passages  in  which 
she  describes  some  of  the  scenes  glorified  by  her  hus* 
band  s  art,  but  have  space  only  for  the  few  words 
on  nightfall  which  seem  tinged  from  Martin's  very 
ette: 

"The  day  deepens  while  we  watch  her.  The 
sea  faints  into  a  pale,  ineffable,  ghostly  blue  under 
the  gaze  of  the  sun,  the  near  pools  glow  with  pink 
and  salmon  tints :  Havre  still  hides  behind  a  veil  of 
haze,  through  which  as  twilight  closes,  the  twin 
electric  light  of  Cape  La  Heve  shines  faintly." 
This  passage  and  that  which  precedes  it  form  virtus 
ally  a  repertory  of  the  few  small  pictures  and  sketches 
which  Martin  did  in  the  four  Norman  years.  Except 
for  the  large  canvas  "Mussel  Gatherers,"  for  which 
a  charming  commentary  might  be  drawn  from  his 
wife's  article,  and  the  more  impressive  "Low  Tide, 
Villerville,"  1884,  the  finest  fruits  of  these  newobser* 
vations  were  characteristically  matured  in  after  years 


48 


The  mussel  gatherers 
collection  of  william  t.  evans 

Signed  at  the  right,  canvas,  28  inches  high,  46  inches  wide. 


SAND  DUNES,  LAKE  ONTARIO 
THE  METROPOLITAN  MUSEUM  OF  ART 
Signed  and  dated  J887,  canvas,  36  inches  high,  59  inches  wide. 


of  reflection  and  memory.  Technically  Martin  was 
far  from  ill*prepared  to  cope  with  this  new  beauty. 
The  art  of  elimination  he  had  already  mastered.  Wit* 
ness  a  fine  canvas  called  " Morning"  dated  1881  and 
exhibited  that  year  in  the  Society  of  American  Art? 
ists.  Specific  form  is  reduced  to  the  merest  indication, 
it  seems  as  if  nothing  were  left  but  glorious  color  and 
vast  space.  In  no  sense,  then,  did  Homer  Martin  go 
to  school  in  France.  Indeed  he  was  already  the  peer 
of  the  be  si:  living  landscape  painters  there,  only  Puvis 
seeming  clearly  his  superior.  Martin  merely  found 
himself  before  a  more  saturated  and  unified  color 
than  that  to  which  he  was  accustomed  in  America, 
and  simply  made  certain  inevitable  technical  changes. 
-The  paint"  (writes  Mr.  Isham  in  his  " History 
of  American  Painting")  "is  laid  on  heavily,  some* 
times  with  the  palette  knife;  the  drawing  while 
true  and  subtle  is  generalized  and  simplified  to  the 
last  degree ;  the  sky  and  water  instead  of  smooth, 
thin,  single  tints  are  a  mass  of  heavy  interwoven 
strokes  of  different  tones.  At  base  the  ch  ange  is 
not  so  great — hardly  more  than  the  use  of  the  pal* 
ette  knife,  larger  brushes  or  more  fully  charged 
with  color  and,  a  looser  touch.  The  real  essentials 
(the  feeling  for  the  relations  of  mass,  for  the  exadt 
difference  of  tone  between  the  sky  and  the  solid 
earth,  the  sense  of  subtle  color)  are  the  same,  and 
under  every  change  of  surface  remains  the  same 
deep,  grave  melancholy,  sobering  but  not  sadden* 
ing,  which  is  the  keynote  of  Martin's  work." 


49 


To  this  admirable  analysis  little  need  be  added. 
Mr.  Iskam  finds  tbat  Monet  and  bis  group,  witb  tbeir 
doctrine  of  tbe  single  impression,  may  bave  been  a 
clarifying  influence,  tbougb  Martin  never  accepted 
tbe  prismatic  formulas  of  impressionism.  Tbat  be 
bad  weigbed  tbe  pointtlliste  tecbnique  carefully  may 
be  assumed.  Howard  Russell  Butler  visited  Martin 
in  Honfleur  in  1886  and  saw  a  picture  started.  Tbe 
paint  was  laid  on  in  a  coarse  mosaic  of  tbe  primary 
colors.  It  seems  tbat  under  mos^  of  tbe  late  pictures 
lies  a  bigbly  colored  preparation  tbat  was  painted  out 
into  a  nearly  uniform  tone.  In  a  few  cases,  notably 
in  "Honfleur  Ligbt,"  at  tbe  Century  Club,  tbe  un= 
derpainting  of  yellow  bas  struck  tbrougb  to  tbe  detri* 
ment  of  tbe  effect.  For  tbe  rest,  Martin  practiced,  not 
broken  color,  after  tbe  new  fasbion,  but  broken  tone. 
To  Tbomas  B.  Clarke  be  once  wrote  of  bis  love  of 
"putting  little  bits  of  paints  alongside  of  eacb  otber, 
to  try  and  make  tbem  twinkle."  Tbis  was  a  foible 
sbared  by  many  a  famous  predecessor,  for  example 
Vermeer  and  Guardi.  Sucb  ratber  dry  tecbnical 
matters  reveal  after  all  tbe  astute  eclecticism  of  tbe 
man.  He  was  never  perturbed  by  bis  admirations, 
but  quietly  intent  on  wbat  migbt  aid  in  tbe  better 
expression  of  bis  own  vision.  A  certain  coolbeaded= 
ness  is,  indeed,  tbe  quality  wbicb  seems  to  make 
Homer  Martin  at  bis  rare  best  more  tban  a  sbade  tbe 
superior  of  tbe  generally  abler  and  always  more  exu? 
berant  Inness. 

At  Villerville  tbe  Martins  spent  nineteen  montbs, 

5° 


moving  to  neighboring  Honfleur  for  tke  sake  of  bet* 
ter  studio  accommodations  in  tke  early  summer  of 
1884.  Twenty  years  later  in  ker  widowkood  tkeVil= 
lerville  time  seemed  to  Mrs.  Martin  ''"tke  most  trans 
quil  and  satisfactory  period  of  our  life  togetker."  But 
tranquillity  was,  as  usual,  a  relative  term  for  tkem. 
In  April,  1883,  early  in  tkeVillerville  days,  ske  wrote 
to  Dr.  Mosker  from  tke  lodging  in  tke  Jardin  Madame 
(tkis  address  affixed  on  a  rudely  printed  paster).  "At 
present  we  are  entirely  out  of  funds.  .  .  .  Want  of 
money  in  a  foreign  country  may  also  mean  want  of 
bread."  But  ske  continues,  after  tke  topic  of  delayed 
or  faikng  remittances  is  exkaused,  tkat  Homer  "kas 
been  working  very  kard  all  winter  and  kas  done  some 
of  kis  best  work.  ...  If  we  can  live  at  all  kere,  ke  will 
do  tkings  wortk  speaking  about."  Fortunately  tkey 
were  able  to  stay  on  and  justify  tkis  prediction.  If 
tke  two  years  and  more  at  Honfleur  were  less  idyllic 
tkan  tkose  at  Villerville,  tkey  were  still  productive. 
Mrs.  Martin  was  indefatigable,  writing  no  less  tkan 
tkree  novels,  two  of  wkick  saw  tke  ligkt  respectively 
in  "Lippincott,s"  and  in  tke  "Catkolic  World."  Mar* 
tin  painted  fitfully  and  continued  to  elaborate  kis 
new  metkod  in  a  "well  ligkted  and  spacious"  studio 
on  a  wkarf  commanding  tke  busy  prospect  of  tke 
karbor.  Tke  old  sk  etcking  grounds  were  still  accessi* 
ble  enougk.  A  new  and  close  friendskip  was  made 
witk  tke  United  States  Consul  F.  F.  Du  Fais,  wkose 
son  still  possesses  in  a  "Distant  View  of  Caen"evi* 
dence  of  Homer  Martin's  wider  wanderings  in  Nor* 


mandy.  In  the  Summer  of  1886  he  went  on  to  the 
Salon,  putting  up  with  his  friend  Rinehart.  An  un* 
expected  and  opportune  remittance  enabled  Mrs. 
Martin  to  follow  him.  He  met  her  with  some  aston* 
ishment  at  the  entrance  of  the  exhibition  where  she 
had  been  waiting  for  several  hours.  That  trip  may 
be  considered  as  a  valedictory  celebration.  She  was 
already  planning  to  resume  the  fight  in  New  York. 
In  August,  1886,  she  sailed,  and  on  December  12th 
he  joined  her  for  a  new  trial  of  the  old  fortunes.  The 
French  period  had  been  chiefly  a  germinative  inter* 
val,  but  he  brought  back  "The  Mussel  Gatherers," 
"Ontario  Sand  Dunes,"  now  in  revised  form  in  the 
Metropolitan  Museum,  which  had  been  unaccount* 
ably  refused  at  the  Salon,  and  that  radiant  little  mas? 
terpiece  "Blossoming  Trees,"  and  he  had  in  his  head 
besides,  half  a  dozen  of  the  finest  landscapes  produced 
in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century. 

PART  SEVEN 

THE  old  studio  in  Tenth  Street  had  been  aban* 
doned  in  1881 .  So  Martin  began  to  work  out  his 
Norman  memories  under  rather  inconvenient  condi* 
tions  in  the  family  apartment  on  Sixty^third  Street. 
By  midwinter  of  1886*87  he  was  in  more  suitable 
quarters  in  the  studio  section  of  West  Fifty =fifth. 
Here,  according  to  Mrs.  Martin,  the  canvas  fancifully 
called  "The  Sun  'Worshippers,"  with  others,  was 
painted.  "The  Sun  Worshippers"  is  one  of  the  few 
instances  in  which  he  sought  the  overtly  picturesque 


52 


in  nature.  We  have  a  line  of  stunted  trees  with  tops 
streaming  down  the  wind  in  obedience  to  the  habitual 
blast.  Beyond  is  a  faint  sea  and  a  veiled  sky  with 
long,  rising  cloud  streamers.  Below  is  a  bit  of  shaggy 
moorland.  The  canvas  is  long  and  in  its  fundamental 
contrast  of  green  and  gold  highly  decorative.  Mrs. 
Martin's  paragraph  on  the  actual  look  of  the  trees  as 
they  grew  near  Criqueboeuf  may  here  find  a  place. 
"A  row  of  trees  bends  over  to  the  east  with  a  curi? 
ous  exaggeration  of  the  landward  slope  of  all  sea* 
side  growths.  It  would  be  worth  a  painter's  while  to 
come  here  at  daybreak  and  catch  them  all  salaaming 
to  the  rising  sun  and  getting  his  early  benediction  on 
their  topmost  branches."  Does  not  the  reappearance 
after  four  years  of  this  fancy  of  the  wife  on  the 
canvas  of  the  husband  suggest  most  eloquently  the 
closeness  of  their  fellowship  during  the  foreign  res* 
pite?  The  picture  has  passed  into  the  collection  of 
Louis  Marshall,  Esq.  "Mussel  Gatherers,"  now  in 
the  possession  of  \Vrn.  T.  Evans,  Esq.,  was  exhib* 
ited  in  the  Academy  of  1886.  Amid  the  plein-atrtsme 
that  was  become  the  mode,  its  subtler  qualities  of 
saturated  color  appear  to  have  passed  unnoticed. 
The  rejected  Salon  picture,  "Sand  Dunes,  Lake  On* 
tario,"  was  taken  up  again  and  finished  in  1887.  In 
the  Metropolitan  Museum  it  now  represents  the  most 
sublimated  phase  of  Martin's  later  art.  On  a  visit  to 
the  farm  of  his  friend,  George  Butler,  at  Croton  Falls, 
N.Y.,  probably  in  the  Autumn  of  1887,  Martin 
painted,  and  contrary  to  his  wont,  entirely  in  the 


53 


open  air,  the  magnificent  canvas,  "Westchester 
Hills."  Butler,  who  besides  being  a  very  competent 
painter  was  a  man  of  taste — evinced  domestically  in 
the  choice  of  a  beautiful  Capriote  bride — held  the 
picture  for  years  at  a  refusal  price  of  six  hundred 
dollars.  Exhibited  in  the  Academy  of  1888,  it  was 
not  sold  till  after  Martin's  death,  and  then  within  a 
few  years,  was  several  times  resold  at  startling  ad* 
vances.  It  now  would  presumably  fetch  the  price  of 
a  good  Rousseau.  Late  in  the  eighties,  Newport  was 
revisited,  and  the  grave  charm  of  its  spacious  moors 
left  an  abiding  impression,  resulting  in  two  or  three 
of  his  finer  works,  such  as  the  very  similar  canvases 
in  the  Lotos  Club  and  in  the  collection  of  Frank  L. 
Babbott,  Esq. 

It  was  soon  clear  that  while  the  return  home  had 
brought  a  complete  renewal  of  the  old  fellowships, 
Martin  was  rather  farther  away  than  ever  from 
making  any  public  effect.  Indeed  the  times  were 
cruel  for  pretty  much  all  our  painters.  Between  the 
inevitable  revolt  against  the  Hudson  River  School, 
the  feud  of  Academy  and  Society,  and  the  sway  of 
the  international  dealers,  American  pictures  were 
no  longer  freely  bought.  Then  recurrent  innovations 
in  the  art  had  a  perturbing  influence.  New  York  was 
ready  to  chat  about  the  various  isms,  but  hardly  to 
invest  money  in  them.  What  friendship  could  do 
was  done  for  Homer  Martin,  even  criticism  began  to 
be  more  generous.  His  position  as  an  acknowledged 
celebrity  was  easily  regained,  but  in  spite  of  a  re* 


54 


markable  production  of  pictures,  his  earnings  were 
actually  more  uncertain  than  in  the  earlier  New 
York  days.  Like  other  returned  exiles,  the  Martins 
found  it  hard  to  settle.  In  1890  they  moved  to  a  house 
in  West  Fiftysninth  Street,  alongside  the  Convent 
of  the  Paulists.  To  Mrs.  Martin,  as  a  devotee,  the 
proximity  to  her  favorite  church  was  most  grateful. 
He  endured  with  good  humor  associations  with 
which  his  sympathy  must  have  been  slight.  In  this 
house  were  painted  "Normandy  Trees,"  in  theWil? 
stach  collection,  Philadelphia,  a  gracious  picture  and 
more  solidly  constructed  than  most  of  the  later  works; 
"Honfleur  Light,"  in  the  Century  Club;  the  "Old 
Manor,"  belonging  to  Dr.  D.  M.  Stimson,  a  most  poetic 
cal  work  which  will  engage  our  especial  attention,  and 
what  is  perhaps  his  best  known  picture,  "Crique* 
boeuf  Church,"  now  owned  by  Samuel  Unter* 
meyer,  Esq.  During  these  busy  years  Martin's  health 
failed  alarmingly.  His  sight  grew  so  poor  that  the 
outlines  had  to  be  traced  for  him  on  the  canvas.  The 
nerve  of  one  eye  was  found  to  be  actually  dead,  the 
other  eye  was  blurred  by  a  cataract;  yet  his  art  and 
courage  rose  superior  to  these  obstacles.  When  his 
wife,  perhaps  surmising  it  might  be  his  last  picture, 
congratulated  him  in  1895  upon  the  completion  of  the 
noble  canvas,  "Adirondack  Scenery,"  he  replied,  "I 
have  learned  to  paint  at  last.  If  I  were  quite  blind 
now,  and  knew  just  where  the  colors  were  on  my 
palette,  I  could  express  myself."  Since  Homer  Mar? 
tin's  frailties  are  patent,  it  is  well  to  mark  the  power 


55 


of  mind  and  memory  and  the  reserve  of  moral  forti* 
tude  implied  in  this  quiet  remark. 

In  the  hope  of  recuperation  he  went  to  England  in 
the  Summer  of  1892.  It  was  the  purchase  of  "Hon* 
fleur  Light"  by  subscription  of  some  fellow^members 
of  the  Century  Club  that  made  the  trip  possible.  The 
picture  hangs  in  the  Club  in  a  room  which  also  con* 
tains  "Lake  Sanford"  of  1870.  The  confrontation  is 
most  interesting  and,  I  feel,  rather  damaging  to  the 
later  picture.  In  spite  of  its  mystery  and  more  stately 
melancholy,  "Honfleur  Lights"  lacks  something  of 
the  well  knit  reality  of  the  neighboring  canvas.  An 
imperious  mood  is  become  a  little  negligent  or  scorns 
fill  of  the  substances  on  which  after  all  its  vision  is 
based.  Much  of  the  English  holiday  was  spent  with 
his  old  friend,  Mr.  George  Chalmers,  at  Bourne? 
mouth.  There  was  a  short  excursion  to  the  old 
haunts  about  Honfleur.  He  looked  up  Mile.  Lemon* 
nier,  the  postmistress  at  Villerville,  who  ten  years 
earlier  had  insisted  on  teaching  French  to  Mrs.  Mar? 
tin  "for  love  or  not  at  all."  He  visited  also  at  Havre 
Mme.  Agnes  Farley,  who  had  been  a  pet  disciple  of 
the  Martins  in  literature  and  art  during  the  Villerville 
days.  She  was  shocked,  she  writes  me,  to  find  him 
"very  broken  and  almost  blind."  Together  they  re* 
visited  the  old  sketching  grounds  on  the  Cote  de 
Grace,  but  "it  was  rather  a  dreary  pilgrimage." 

Martin  returned  to  New  York  in  the  Autumn  to 
find  his  wife  under  strain  to  the  danger^point.  A 
cumulation  of  inordinate  hack-work  and  worry  of  all 


WESTCHESTER  HILLS 
COLLECTION  OF  DANIEL  GUGGENHEIM 
Signed  at  the  right,  canvas,  32  inches  high,  60  inches  wide. 


sorts  had  at  length  shaken  an  indomitable  spirit.  In 
December  of  1892  she  fled  in  the  hope  of  rest  to  the 
home  of  her  eldest  son,  Ralph,  at  St.  Paul,  where, 
after  a  nervous  collapse,  she  gradually  regained 
strength  for  a  new  ordeal.  Between  ill  health  and 
lack  of  money,  her  husband  found  it  impossible  longer 
to  maintain  the  struggle  in  New  York.  So  in  June, 
1893,  he  followed  her,  taking  with  him  in  unfinished 
condition  the  "Criqueboeuf  Church"  and  the  "View 
on  the  Seine,"  which  he  and  his  wife  used  to  call 
"The  Harp  of  the^Vinds."  The  Metropolitan  Mus= 
eum  might  well  adopt  this  more  suggestive  title  for 
the  most  poetical  of  Martin's  works. 

From  letters  to  his  friends,Thomas  B.  Clarke,  who 
in  these  years  handled  the  sale  of  the  pictures,  and 
F.  F.  Du  Fais,  it  would  be  possible  to  set  forth  the  re? 
maining  years  in  all  their  drab  details.  A  mere  look 
at  the  heavy,  sprawling,  tremulous  handwriting  tells 
much.  Hand  and  eye  are  both  failing.  He  complains 
whimsically  that  private  letters  have  to  be  read  to 
him.  He  works  in  a  tormenting  side4ight.  Still  more 
trying  is  the  lack  of  companionship.  '  '  I  never  before 
knew,"  he  writes  to  Clarke,  "the  importance  of  hav= 
ing  some  one,  who  knows  what  pictures  are,  look  in 
occasionally  and  say  something  in  the  way  of  criti= 
cism."  Isolated  by  their  pride  and  poverty  amid  a 
prosperous  and  hospitable  community,  it  was  the 
first  time  in  more  than  thirty  years  that  the  Martins 
had  not  been  besought  by  the  best  people.  And  yet 
the  lack  of  congenial  associations  meant  concentra* 


57 


tion,  which,  with  heroic  abstinence  from  his  beloved 
beer,  made  the  Saint  Paul  years  extraordinarily  pro* 
ductive.  Such  a  last  rally  as  Homer  Martin  made 
enlarges  one's  faith  in  human  nature ;  so  little  it  was 
to  be  predicted  of  a  man  nearly  blind,  shattered  in 
health,  and  baffled  throughout  a  life  time.  Very  soon 
he  sent  back  the  "Criqueboeuf  Church"  and,  for  a 
wonder,  sold  it.  In  the  Academy  of  1894  was  shown 
"A  Distant  View  of  Caen,"  painted  for  Du  Fais  and 
the  last  picture  publicly  exhibited.  In  the  Spring  of 
1894  some  friends  brought  him  on  for  a  Century  Club 
reunion  and  a  six  weeks'  visit.  They  said  good-bye 
never  expecting  to  see  him  again,  so  clearly  measured 
seemed  his  strength  and  his  days.  It  was  perhaps 
the  glow  of  finding  himself  still  valued  among  his 
peers,  perhaps  alluring  hopes  of  financial  success, 
later  held  out  to  him — whatever  it  may  have  been 
that  fanned  the  old  fires,  the  Summer  of  1895  wit* 
nessed  a  true  resurrection.  In  a  quiet  farm  house  near 
St.  Paul  he  finished  the  three  great  canvases,  -The 
Harp  of  the  Winds,"  "Adirondack  Scenery,"  and 
"The  Normandy  Farm."  The  two  former  pictures 
had  been  long  sketched  on  the  canvas  and  represent 
his  matures^  workmanship.  With  justifiable  pride 
he  wrote  to  Clarke  a  few  months  after  the  pictures 
had  gone  on,  "I  do  believe  I  have  a  grip  on  technique 
quite  beyond  any  former  work." 

Whatever  hopes  were  based  on  these  three  splens 
did  works  were  soon  disillusioned.  The  pictures  made 
their  momentary  furore  chiefly  among  critics  and 

58 


similar  impecunious  folk.  No  sale  ensued,  and  the 
advances  on  account  left  Martin  deeper  in  debt  than 
ever.  Something  of  the  old  wit  and  fortitude  still 
flickers  in  the  letters  to  Clarke  and  Du  Fais,  hut  the 
blackest  moods  of  self  abasement  and  more  rarely  of 
suspicion  of  others  begin  to  appear.  He  worked  per* 
sistently  at  three  new  pictures,  but  with  scant  re* 
suits,  each  day  scraping  out  the  work  of  the  day  be* 
fore.  Only  one  more  pidture  was  ever  finished,  a 
Newport  scene  signed  in  the  last  months  of  1896. 
As  early  as  February  21,  1896,  he  hints  to  Clarke  of 
'  'operations  flavored  with  despair."  In  May  he  writes 
to  Du  Fais,  "the  foe  is  eating  the  gizzard  out  of  me." 
Cancer  of  the  throat  was,  though  unacknowledged, 
already  present. 

There  are  pathetic  and  witty  passages  in  the  letters 
of  the  last  year  which  should  find  a  place  in  a  biog* 
raphy.  Here  I  may  recall  only  a  passage  in  which 
he  regards  his  pictures  as  a  means  of  saying  to  his  in* 
timates  things  that  could  not  otherwise  be  expressed. 
Aside  from  this,  he  is  indifferent  as  to  the  fate  of  his 
works.  To  a  criticism  that  a  Newport  pidture  has 
too  yellow  a  sky  he  retorts,  "Of  course  the  bald  state* 
ment  that  a  picture  is  too  any  color  is  ridiculous." 
On  news  of  bad  luck  in  selling  pictures,  he  consoles 
himself  with  the  reflection  that  "ownership  of  pic* 
tures  is  a  figment  of  the  brain ;  you  cant  own  pictures 
anymore  than  you  can  poetry  or  music."  Always  in 
these  last  months  his  thought  goes  back  to  the  com* 
rades  in  New  York.  There  was  a  moment  when  the 


59 


hopes  of  the  Martin  family  rose  high  over  a  Montana 
gold  mine  in  which  they  had  a  slender  investment. 
"Its  success,"  he  writes  to  Clarke  in  February,  1896, 
"will  make  the  Martins  so  rich  that  I  can  have  as 
good  a  skylight  as  any  other  man,  can  paint  those 
scientific  pictures  I  have  been  bragging  about,  can 
give  them,  pay  them  is  better,  to  my  long  suffering 
friends  as  I  have  dreamed  of  doing,  and  when  the 
tardy  clamorers  come  for  them  you  and  I  can  tell 
them,  almost  in  one  breath,  that  we  used  to  sell  pic* 
tures.  '  The  same  letter  contains  a  very  modest  de£U 
nition  of  financial  ease  as  understood  by  the  recent 
creator  of  the  "Harp  of  the  Winds."  "I  ought  to 
have  at  least  $100  a  month  to  be  easy."  It  may  also 
be  remarked  that  this  humorous  vision  of  the  "tardy 
clamorers"  for  the  pictures  was  quite  liter  ally  verified 
within  a  couple  of  years,  when  his  ears  heard  no 
longer  either  the  appalling  discord  or  the  heartening 
acclaim  of  our  world. 

That  his  last  days  were  spent  in  relative  comfort 
and  ease  was  due  not  to  the  Montana  mine,  nor  yet  to 
his  wife's  devoted  drudgery  as  a  proofreader,  but  to 
the  timely  aid  of  the  old  New  York  friends.  Martin's 
response  to  Du  Fais,  who  with  Brownell  was  the 
transmitter  of  the  testimonial,  is  in  Mrs.  Martin's 
handwriting  and  runs — "  The  exquisite  delight  of 
finding  myself  so  kindly  regarded  by  my  friends  puts 
all  other  considerations  and  values  in  the  situation 
quite  in  the  background."  In  the  same  letter  Mrs. 
Martin  meets  the  wishes  of  the  movers  of  the  sub* 


60 


scription  that  it  should  he  regarded  as  an  advance  or 
loan  with  the  happy  suggestion  that  the  sum  be 
applied  to  the  purchase  of  the-  Seine  picture,"  which 
was  "the  most  satisfactory  of  his  pictures  from  the 
time  it  was  outlined  on  the  canvas."  In  this  way 
"The  Harp  of  the  Winds"  came  into  the  Metropolis 
tan  Museum,  through  the  generosity,  as  one  may 
read  on  the  label,  of  "A  Group  of  Gentlemen." 

The  last  line  I  have  seen  from  Martin  s  hand  is 
dated  on  the  eve  of  the  New  Year  of  1897.  It  is  to  Du 
Fais,  regrets  a  dismal  letter  of  the  day  before,  and 
tells  the  good  news  that  Brownell  has  reported  the 
sale  of  the  Newport  picture  to  Babbott.  A  stricken 
man,  Homer  Martin  was  to  die  in  something  like 
prosperity.  From  that  New  Year  the  tide  seemed  to 
turn  in  his  favor,  nor  has  it  ebbed  since.  Of  this  bet* 
tered  destiny  he  can  hardly  have  been  conscious. 
What  had  been  merely  the  dull  discomfort  in  the 
throat  changed  into  a  mercifully  brief  space  of  cor? 
roding  agony,  and  on  February  12th,  1897,  the  much 
worn  man  entered  into  rest  unnoticed.  The  New 
York  papers  provided  not  even  the  usual  perfunctory 
obituary.  His  body  lies  in  St.  Paul.  Mrs.  Martin,  as 
I  write,  lives  on  tranquilly  with  her  son  at  Los  An* 
geles,  but  the  days  when  she  was  the  helpmate  of 
Homer  Martin  have  become  dim  to  her. 


61 


PART  EIGHT 


THE  man  being  safely  dead,  his  work  began  to  look 
desirable.  Within  five  or  six  years  the  prices  of 
fine  Martins  were  read  no  longer  in  hundreds  but  in 
thousands.  Take  the  case  of  what  Martin  once  rue* 
fully  described  to  Clarke  as  "a  big  unavailable  pic? 
ture" — to  wit,  "Westchester  Hills."  After  its  exhibit 
tion  in  the  Academy  of  1888  it  was  stored  with  a 
painter  friend  George  Butler,  who  hoped  some  day 
to  pay  six  hundred  dollars  for  it.  On  Martin's  death 
this  refusal  naturally  terminated,  and  two  years  later 
Mr.  William  T.  Evans  "  after  long  hesitation"  ac* 
quired  the  unavailable  picture  for  one  thousand  dol* 
lars.  At  his  auction  sale  in  1900  his  temerity  was 
rewarded  by  a  price  of  four  thousand  seven  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars.  In  1902,  in  the  Milliken  sale,  the 
picture,  with  the  stigma  of  unavailability  now  thors 
oughly  removed,  fetched  five  thousand  three  hun* 
dred  dollars.  Should  the  purchaser,  Daniel  Guggen? 
heim,  Esq.,  wish  to  send  it  again  to  the  auction  room, 
it  would  doubtless  bring  three  or  four  times  that  sum. 

Become  a  recognized  and  valuable  commodity, 
and  the  supply  being  quite  limited,  his  pictures  soon 
received  the  flattery  of  imitation.  From  1903  or  so 
there  was  a  steady  production  of  rather  specious  false 
Martins  which  found  a  ready  sale  at  prices  to  which 
he  himself  had  never  aspired.  At  a  club  exhibition 
given  in  honor  of  his  memory  about  this  time,  a  third 
of  the  entries  were  spurious.  Two  such  pictures  had 

62 


the  transient  distinction  of  being  accepted  by  tke 
Nation  and  bung  in  Tbe  National  Gallery  at  Wash* 
ington.  Tbe  scandal  came  to  a  bead  in  tbe  Evans* 
Clausen  trial  in  1907,  and  tbougb  tbe  verdict  was 
inconclusive,  tbe  facts  were  patent.  Today  be  wbo 
buys  a  Martin  of  tbe  later  manner  sbould  look  well 
to  its  pedigree  and  even  more  keenly  at  tbe  picture 
itself 

Tbe  paradox  tbat  persons  wbo  claimed  tbe  repute 
of  amateurs  were  paying  great  prices  for,  say,  tbe 
quite  third* rate  landscapes  of  tbe  Dupres,  wbile 
"Westchester  Hills,"  tbe  11  Harp  of  tbe  Winds,"  and 
"Adirondack  Scenery"  could  bave  been  bad  for  a 
song,  I  merely  note  witbout  comment.  My  subject  is 
a  particular  artist  and  not  tbe  various  pseudo*estbetic 
forms  of  buman  vanity.  But  it  is  fair  to  add  tbat  tbe 
fault  did  not  be  witb  American  criticism.  From  1877 
on,  Martin's  pictures  were  usually  praised  and  often 
in  tbe  warmest  terms.  In  tbe  case  of  Brownell,  writ* 
ing  in  tbese  years  for  tbe  "World,"  friendship  and 
critical  conviction  concurred  in  enthusiasm.  Success 
sive  critics  of  tbe  "Evening  Post,"  among  them  John 
Van  Dyke  and  Russell  Sturgis,  were  avowed  Mars 
tinites.  W'illiam  M.  Laffan  of  tbe  "Sun"  was  of  tbe 
same  feeling.  Somewhat  later  Charles  de  Kay  con* 
tinued  tbe  tradition  in  the  "Times."  Walter  Cook 
was  an  antisMartinite  but  bis  pungent  girds  in  the 
"Tribune"  probably  helped  rather  than  harmed  the 
victim.  Equally  appreciative  with  the  daily  press 
were  the  art  magazines.  The  influential  "Art  Jour* 

63 


rial,"  in  April,  1878,  praised  the  tragic  force  of  a  Lake 
Ontario  picture  exhibited  in  the  Society  and  con= 
eluded,  uasa  purely  impressionist  picture,  this  takes 
its  place  with  the  dreamy  distances  of  Corot  or  the 
silver  nocturnes  of  Whistler."  In  the  short-lived  but 
ably  edited 1  'Art  Review,"  S.  "W.  G.  Benjamin  wrote 
most  appreciatively  of  Martin's  exhibits  of  1880  and 
1881.  Homer  Martin,  in  short,  had  about  all  the  sup= 
port  that  an  artist  has  a  right  to  expect  from  contem= 
porary  criticism,  and  it  availed  him  nothing.  Which 
reminds  me  of  an  experience  in  the  studio  of  a  land* 
scape  painter  where  I  may  have  betrayed  some  un= 
due  sense  of  critical  responsibility.  He  bade  me  be  of 
easy  mind,  for  in  forty  years  he  had  never  heard  of  a 
picture  being  sold  or  remaining  unsold  by  reason  of 
anything  critic  ever  said  or  wrote.  Whether  or  no 
my  friend  was  right  in  a  statement  at  once  reassuring 
and  humiliating  to  a  professional  critic,  it  is  certain 
that  the  great  art  patrons  of  Homer  Martin's  time 
were  influenced  neither  by  professional  criticism  nor 
by  the  verdict  of  the  most  cultured  taste.  It  was  the 
day  of  dealer?made  collections,  and  while  many  deal* 
ers  made  these  very  well,  they  all  preferred  foreign 
pictures,  especially  the  staple  product  of  the  Institute 
of  France  and,  by  way  of  novelty,  the  painters  of 
Barbizon.  The  genial  old  days,  when  New  York  as 
a  matter  of  course  bought,  largely  out  of  friendship, 
the  paintings  of  the  Academicians,  had  passed.  The 
new  patronage  of  American  art  inaugurated  by 
astute  marcband-amateurs  and  far-sighted  dealers  did  not 

64 


AN  OLD  MANOR 
COLLECTION  OF  DR.  D.  M.  STIMSON 
Canvas,  25  inches  high,  38  inches  wide. 


HONFLEUR  LIGHT 
THE  CENTURY  ASSOCIATION 
Signed  at  the  right,  canvas,  24  inches  high,  36  inches  wide. 


begin  till  Martin  was  gone.  Wliile  in  fairness  some* 
thing  of  Homer  Martin's  ill  fortune  must  be  laid  to 
bis  own  irregularities,  I  am  driven  to  tbe  ratber  lame 
conclusion  tbat  bis  only  unpardonable  fault  was  to 
bave  been  born  of  original  talent  in  a  poor  family  at 
tbe  wrong  time.  Tbe  wishful  resignation  witb  wbicb 
Martin  accepted  pubHc  neglect  means  perbaps  less 
personal  humility  than  a  lucid  perception  of  the  fact 
that  without  extraordinary  business  capacity  or  luck, 
neither  of  which  he  ever  had,  no  mere  landscape 
painter  could  hope  to  thrive. 


PART  NINE 


HOMER  MARTIN  once  maintained  among 
friends  who  were  discussing  the  subject  of  story? 
telling  pictures,  that  there  was  in  every  picture  some* 
thing  of  this.  And  being  asked  to  prove  it  from  his 
own  "Westchester  Hills,"  he  answered,  "Oh,  the  old 
home  has  been  deserted,  and  all  the  family  has  gone 
West  along  that  road."  The  retort  was  only  half  a 
jest.  The  pathos  of  the  scene  does  largely  depend  up* 
on  the  impression  that  these  fields  and  slopes  and 
groves  are  derelict,  abandoned  by  man  and  not  quite 
given  back  to  Nature.  No  picture  of  Homer  Martin 
is  merely  retinal  and  objective  after  approved  modern 
formulas.  He  was  too  deeply  conscious  of  tbe  V1C1SS1* 
tudes  of  the  earth  for  that.  There  is  in  the  Adiron* 
dack  and  Lake  Ontario  subjects  a  sense  of  the  mould* 
ing  or  fracturing  agency  of  storm,  of  the  passing  of 
fire  or  rain,  of  the  furrowing  of  gullies  and  crumbKng 


of  ledges.  A  kind  of  pity  for  the  old  earth  blended 
with  awe  at  the  immemorial  processes  of  growth  and 
decay  is  ever  present.  In  the  Normandy  pictures  we 
have  the  effort  of  man  arresting  and  guiding  these 
vicissitudes,  and  there  is  usually  a  hint  of  the  refract 
toriness  of  the  earth  to  such  pains.  His  favorite  hour 
and  light  are  those  of  early  evening,  when,  undis* 
turbed  by  the  shifting  pageantry  of  the  sun,  one  may 
meditate  upon  the  uncertain  tenure  that  man  shares 
with  mute  creation.  There  are  pictures  of  the  early 
time  and  a  few  late  ones,  like  "  Sun  Worshippers," 
in  which  he  yields  himself  gladly  to  the  intoxication 
of  frank  color  and  to  the  joy  of  sunlight.  But  this 
festal  and  candid  mood  is  at  all  times  exceptional.  He 
brings  usually  to  the  observation  and  pictorial  inter* 
pretation  of  nature,  a  definite  and  poetical  mood  full 
of  that  noble  and  measured  melancholy,  which  in 
poetry  we  call  elegiac.  It  was  the  mood  proper  to  a 
lover  of  Keats  and  Beethoven. 

Every  picture  of  Martin,  then,  represents  a  com* 
plexof  recurrent  moods,  observations  and  memories. 
His  tradition  is  the  contemplative  one  and  absolutely 
alfen  to  the  instantaneous  reactions  of  impressionism. 
And  his  habit  of  constantly  returning  to  old  themes 
is  significant.  Between  1874  and  1887  there  must  be 
four  or  five  versions  of  "Sand  Dunes,  Lake  Ontario," 
each  one  coming  a  little  nearer  the  light  poise  of  the 
remote  dunes  between  sky  and  water,  and  each  work* 
ing  out  finer  symbols  of  swart  aridity  in  the  forms 
of  the  foreground  trees.  Indeed  every  picture  of  his 

66 


is  quite  slowly  and  thoughtfully  elaborated  as  a  con; 
scious  arrangement.  The  matter  stands  very  plain 
in  his  own  words  to  Thomas  B.  Clarke  in  a  letter 
dated  February  25, 1896.  "As  to  the  pictures  in  sight 
...  in  sight,  that  is  to  me,  the  28x40"  (probably  Mr. 
Babbott's  "Newport")  "is  all  thought  out  except  one 
or  two  cloud  forms  which  trouble  me  greatly.  The 
larger  picture  in  which  I  intend  to  sum  up  about 
what  I  think  of  the  woods"  (apparently  it  was  never 
finished)  "needs  considerable  scene  shifting  before  the 
curtain  can  be  raised.  ...  It  might  be  ready  for  the 
Autumn  openings  if  I  settle  on  the  arrangement  ofthe 
parts  soon."  Such  testimony  as  to  the  wholly  con* 
scious  intellectuality  of  Homer  Martin's  invention 
dispenses  me  from  further  analysis.  I  wish  in  lieu  of 
a  formal  criticism  to  trace  the  quality  of  the  inspira* 
tion  and  pictorial  idiom  in  three  consummate  exam* 
pies,— "An  Old  Manor  House,"  "The  Harp  of  the 
Winds,"  and  "Adirondack  Scenery." 

Beneath  a  troubled  gray  sky,  in  which  a  single  flash 
of  red  gives  the  last  signal  of  dying  day,  the  old  manor 
house  stands  amid  a  copse  of  leafless,  untrimmed 
poplars.  Vacant  doors  and  windows  are  so  many  dark 
gashes  in  the  warm^brown,  crumbling  wall.  The  sor- 
did  trees  are  swarthy  and  their  branches  give  forth  a 
peculiar  murkiness  that  invests  the  deserted  mansion. 
It  seems  as  if  some  memory  of  Poe's  "House  of  Usher" 
must  have  been  in  the  artist's  mind  as  he  painted,  so 
exactly  does  he  make  visual  the  familiar  words : 
"About  the  whole  mansion  and  domain  there  hung 

67 


an  atmosphere  peculiar  to  themselves  and  their 
immediate  vicinity — an  atmosphere  which  had  no 
affinity  with  the  air  of  Heaven,  but  which  had 
reeked  up  from  the  decayed  trees,  and  the  gray 
wall,  and  the  silent  tarn, — a  pestilent  and  mystic 
vapor,  dull,  sluggish,  faintly  discernible,  and  leaden; 
hued." 

Between  the  spectator  and  the  lonely  manor  lies  a 
lustrous,  stagnant  pool,  marbled  strangely  with  con* 
fused  reflections  from  shore  and  sky,  and  containing 
more  clearly  the  chill  image  of  the  desolate  house. 
Such  a  house  and  such  a  pool  exist  at  Criqueboeuf,  but 
again  the  conviction  imposes  itself  that  this  is  ""The 
bleak  and  lurid  tarn  that  lay  in  unruffled  lustre"  by 
the  "House  of  Usher,"  wherein  one  might  lookshud; 
deringly  upon  "the  remodelled  and  inverted  images 
of  the  gray  sedges,  and  the  ghastly  tree  stems,  and  the 
vacant  and  eye4ike  windows."  Yet  the  mood  of  this 
intensely  tragic  picture  is  not  one  of  horror.  There  is 
a  kind  of  overwhelming  pity  in  it,  as  if  the  departing 
gleam  were  the  sign  of  countless  days  that  had  gone 
down  in  sadness ;  the  old  manor  among  its  sordid  im* 
prisoning  trees,  a  veritable  symbol  of  all  glories  that 
have  departed.  For  a  melancholy,  entirely  composed 
and  noble,  yet  moving  to  the  verge  of  tears,  I  hardly 
know  in  the  whole  range  of  landscape  art  an  analogy 
for  this  picture.  To  one  who  feels  its  emotional  con? 
tent,  it  will  seem  sheerest  pedantry  to  remark  its 
soberly  splendid  interweaving  of  warm  browns  and 
luminous  grays,  or  such  felicities  of  arrangement  as 

68 


the  proportions  of  the  pool  to  the  rest,  the  massing  of 
the  trees  against  the  sky,  and  the  liberating  lift  of  the 
land  at  the  right. 

Unless  it  he 1 1  Criqueheouf  Church,"  the  "Harp  of 
theV/inds"  is  Homer  Martin's  most  famous  picture, 
as  it  is  his  most  admired  and  accessible.  That  appro* 
priate  title,  which  he  and  his  wife  always  used  be* 
tween  themselves,  he  declined  to  use  publicly,  fearing 
lest  it  seem  too  sentimental.  ''But  that,"  writes  his 
wife,  "was  what  it  meant  to  him,  for  he  was  thinking 
of  music  all  the  while  he  was  painting  it."  She  tells 
us,  too,  that  the  trees  were  originally  much  higher, 
and,  with  their  reflection  in  the  slow  current,  assumed 
more  explicitly  the  form  of  a  harp.  The  change  she 
regretted,  in  which  I  think  few  will  follow  her,  for 
nothing  could  be  more  satisfyingly  gracious  than  this 
file  of  slender  tufted  trees  bending  suavely  with  the 
curve  of  a  broadening  river.  Upstream,  the  light 
touches  the  white*  washed  houses  of a  village.  A  slight 
dip  in  the  low  skyline  suggests  the  upper  winding 
course  of  the  quiet  river.  The  clouded  sky,  shot  with 
pale  bars  of  gold  and  silver  over  a  tenuous  blue,  has 
that  peculiar  diagonal  rise,  which  gives  height  and 
movement.  Silvery  gray  is  the  prevailing  tone,  into 
which  are  worked  discreet  enrichments  of  yellow, 
dull  green,  and  blue.  The  rough  and  lustreless  surface 
is  remarkably  luminous.  A  sober  preciousness,  both 
earthy  and  ethereal,  comparable  to  the  mysterious 
bloom  of  fine  Japanese  pottery,  is  characteristic  of  the 
whole  effect.  One  may  note  the  ingenuity  by  which 

69 


all  the  curves  which  are  arbitrary  elements  in  a  beau? 
tiful  pattern  in  plane  are  also  essential  factors  in  depth. 
Suck  harmonizing  of  arabesque  with  spatial  suggest 
tion  is  of  the  very  essence  of  fine  composition.  Better 
than  such  pedantries,  it  may  be  simply  to  say  that 
no  landscape  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  will  more 
immediately  arrest  the  attention,  and  few  will  better 
endure  prolonged  contemplation. 

"Adirondack  Scenery"  is  perhaps  the  best  epitome 
of  Homer  Martin's  entire  achievement,  being  based 
on  memories  that  had  been  turned  over  and  refined 
for  more  than  thirty  years.  Its  direct  prototype  was 
a  small  canvas  called  the  "Source  of  the  Hudson."  It 
is  the  richest  in  color  of  all  the  later  works  and  possi* 
bly  the  broadest  and  most  skilful  in  handling.  The 
eye  looks  beyond  gray,  flat  ledges  over  a  stretch  of 
brown  second^growth,  amid  which  flash  rare  scarlet 
maples,  beyond  a  shallow  valley  and  a  shaggy  distant 
ridge,  to  a  steely  lake  where  all  the  mountain  slopes 
converge.  The  further  ascent  catches  a  golden  per* 
meating  bloom  from  a  dense  vapor  bank  that  recoils 
from  the  higher  barrier  and  casts  down  a  shadow. 
These  vapors  surge  forward  in  a  lurid  and  swirling 
yellow  mass,  thinning  at  the  sides  and  top  into  the 
serene  blue  of  a  rain^washed  sky.  A  peculiar  and 
soothing  gravity,  proper  to  the  vast  spaces  repre^ 
sented,  is  the  ruling  impression.  One  would  be  dull 
of  heart  indeed  who  could  stand  before  this  picture 
without  a  renewed  and  consoling  awe  at  the  secular 
balance  of  earth,  air,  and  water  which  brings  beauty 


70 


out  of  ravage  and  calm  out  of  strife.  Nor  is  there 
anything  mystic  or  far-fetched  about  the  picture.  Its 
highly  generalized  forms  are  firm,  its  textures  of  for, 
est,  rock,  and  cloud,  unexaggeratedly  veracious.  I 
think  it  would  appeal  almost  as  strongly  to  a  woods* 
man  as  to  a  poet. 

Unless  I  have  grossly  misread  these  pictures,  we 
have  to  do  with  a  most  distinguished  kind  of  imagina* 
tion,  with  a  mind  keenly  lyrical  and  meditative.  The 
inspiration  is  not  so  much  various  as  authentic  and 
deep.  From  beginning  to  end  of  Homer  Martin's 
painting  we  have  much  the  same  kind  of  transaction 
between  a  sensitive  clairvoyant  spirit  and  natural 
appearances.  What  he  seeks  in  nature  is  solace,  sus* 
pension  of  the  will,  expansion  of  the  contemplative 
self  The  mood  I  have  in  passing  called  Virgilian.  It 
might  be  well  to  add — of  a  Virgil  exiled  in  an  untamed 
land.  The  feeling  is  essentially  pagan,  and  not  to  be 
confused  with  the  Wordsworthian  and  mystical 
temper  which  it  superficially  recalls,  nor  with  the 
sentimental  primitivism  of  the  Rousseauists.  It  is 
somewhat  stoical,  valuing  Nature,  chiefly  as  a  means 
for  regaining  in  tranquillity  the  form  of  one's  own 
spirit.  The  sentiment  might  be  paralleled  in  Milton 
and  is  not  uncommon  in  the  eighteenth  century 
poets,  such  as  Gray,  though  then  it  sometimes  implies 
a  quite  unstoical  revolt  against  society.  I  find  nothing 
of  this  Rousseauism  in  Martin.  It  seems  to  me  that 
his  temper  is  quite  classically  poised  and  his  real  con? 
cern  with  the  governance  of  his  own  soul.  We  find 

71 


a  similar  stoicism  paradoxically  interblent  with  the 
Christianity  of  Bryant.  One  of  his  best  poems,  "A 
Winter  Piece,"  a  poem  that  curiously  anticipates 
much  recent  pictorial  concern  with  Winter  scenery, 
breathes  in  a  somewhat  simpler  tone  much  of  the 
mood  of  Homer  Martin's  pictures. 

The  time  has  been  that  these  wild  solitudes, 
Yet  beautiful  as  wild,  were  trod  by  me 
Oftener  than  now,  and  when  the  ills  of  life 
Had  chafed  my  spirit — when  the  unsteady  pulse 
Beat  with  strange  flutterings — I  would  wander 
forth 

And  seek  the  woods.  The  sunshine  on  my  pa  th 

Was  to  me  a  friend.  The  swelling  hills, 

The  quiet  dells  retiring  far  between, 

With  gentle  invitation  to  explore 

Their  windings,  were  a  calm  society 

That  talked  with  me  and  soothed  me. 

Such  a  mood  may  sometimes  be  merely  the  evasion 
of  a  weak  spirit,  but  Homer  Martin,  if  wayward  was 
not  weak.  He  expresses  a  solace  that  strong  spirits 
have  often  felt  in  Nature,  a  sentiment  that  has  been 
the  staple  of  poetry  from  the  days  ofthe  sages  oflnd  1a 
and  China,  through  Oedipus  at  Colonus  and  the  sto? 
ics,  to  our  own  century.  His  vein  is  narrow  but  in 
the  finest  tradition  and  of  the  most  evident  personal 
authenticity. 

Yet,  saving  only  La  Farge  and  Vedder,  I  have  never 
heard  a  painter  speak  in  unreserved  praise  of  Mar? 


72 


ADIRONDACK  SCENERY 
COLLECTION  OF  MRS.  SAMUEL  UNTERMYER 
Signed  at  the  right,  canvas,  29  inches  high,  40  inches  wide. 


tins  work,  and  I  have  heard  painters  whose  opinions 
are  usually  worth  while  declare  that  it  is  negligible. 
No  formal  rebuttal  of  such  opinions  seems  to  me  nec= 
essary,  but  a  word  as  to  standards  may  be  in  order. 
The  value  of  any  work  of  art,  I  believe,  is  solely  that 
it  should  communicate  a  choice  and  desirable  emo? 
tion.  This  is  true  even  of  so-called  impersonal  art. 
In  Manet,  for  example,  quite  the  most  objective  of 
painters,  one  shares  a  tense  and  distinguished  curi? 
osity.  Now  the  person  who  gets  no  such  choice  and 
desirable  emotion  from  the  art  of  Homer  Martin,  may, 
if  he  be  assured  that  his  sensibilities  have  reached  their 
limit  of  education,  quite  properly  neglect  work  from 
which  he  derives  no  pleasure.  Which  comes  to  says 
ing  that  the  reasonable  criticism  of  a  work  of  art  is 
always  of  its  emotional  content,  and  so  in  a  manner 
of  the  artist  himself  It  is  always  competent  to  declare 
that  this  emotional  content,  however  strongly  and 
consistently  expressed,  does  violence  to  our  own  na* 
ture  and  is  for  us  undesirable.  Indeed  any  other 
unfavorable  criticism  of  a  work  of  art  seems  in  the 
nature  of  things  superfluous  and  absurd. 

If  this  very  simple  principle  were  understood,  it 
would  save  much  confusion.  There  is  abroad  an  ultra? 
romantic  assumption  that  we  are  always  bound  to 
accept  the  point  of  view  of  the  artist  but  perfectly  at 
liberty  to  object  to  his  technique.  Precisely  the  reverse 
is  the  case.  His  point  of  view,  having  all  sorts  of 
general  and  vital  implications,  we  are  entirely  free  to 
accept  or  reject,  being  bound  merely  to  understand  it, 


73 


V 

while  the  particular  rhetoric  of  his  expression,  heing 
idiosyncratic  and  necessary,  we  must  accept,  and  the 
less  we  bother  about  it  the  better.  To  do  otherwise  is 
to  miss  the  whole  point.  You  may,  for  instance,  at? 
tack  Claude  as  a  poor  imagination,  but  not  as  a  flimsy 
executant.  Yet,  many  admit  his  poetry  and  deplore 
his  tree^forms  or  the  thinness  of  his  pigment  or  what 
not..  Which  is  one  of  the  more  asininely  specious 
forms  of  esthetic  pedantry. 

With  men  for  whom  a  George  Fuller  or  a  Eugene 
Carriere  is  primarily  a  feeble  draughtsman  I  cannot 
argue.  Let  them  come  out  honestly  and  say  they 
think  the  sentiment  is  forced  or  cheap,  and  we  can 
selfrespectingly  agree  to  disagree.  And  my  grudge 
against  my  painter  friends  who  decry  Homer  Martin 
is  that  they  do  not  discuss  his  sentiment,  but  assert 
some  weakness  in  his  diction.  He  splits  his  pictorial 
infinitives  or  ends  his  phrases  feebly  with  a  preposi? 
tion,  or  otherwise  breaks  the  rules.  Whose  rules  ? 
I  admire  those  who  know  so  exactly  how  a  vision 
they  themselves  have  never  entertained  save  through 
what  they  call  a  defective  form  of  expression  should 
be  conveyed.  Yet  there  is  a  professional  realm  in 
which  these  technical  matters  are  subject  of  legiti* 
mate  interest.  Only  we  should  keep  in  mind  that 
such  considerations  are  subesthetic  and  quite  seconds 
ary .  Taking  the  work  of  Homer  Martin  on  this  lower 
plane,  it  is  obvious  that  he  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  a 
great  painter.  The  zest,  variety,  swiftness,  and  deft* 
ness  of  the  consummate  practitioner  he  has  fitfully, 


74 


and  on  the  whole,  rarely.  An  impeccable  sense  of 
mass  and  close-knit  atmospheric  balance  was  not  bis. 
Tryon,  wbo,  in  some  respects,  may  be  regarded  as  bis 
closest  living  affinity,  is  more  ski  lful  and  curious  in 
tbese  matters.  I  bave  sometimes  felt  tbat  Henry 
Wolf 's  admirable  woodcut  copy  of  tbe  "  Harp  of  the 
Winds"  was  just  a  sbade  more  substantial  and  fine 
tban  tbe  original.  Yet  it  is  precisely  tbe  twilight,  and 
occasionally  unsure  vision  of  Homer  Martin  that  we 
value.  And  the  unsureness  in  no  wise  affects  what 
he  has  to  say  to  us.  Beautiful  pattern, vibrating  color, 
distinguished  mood — all  these  things  are  precisely  and 
fully  conveyed.  What  matters  it  while  the  "Harp  of 
the  Winds"  balances  rhythmically  in  pellucid  air  and 
shimmering  water  that  perhaps  you  couldn't  walk 
on  the  nearer  strand?  The  fact  that  you  conceive  the 
feat  shows  that  you  have  missed  the  picture  entirely. 

To  those  who  are  sensitive  to  the  gracious  and 
highbred  melancholy  of  Homer  Martin's  work,  this 
explanation  will  be  superfluous.  To  others  it  may  be 
said  that  his  alleged  technical  weaknesses  are  of  the 
emotional  essence  and  stand  or  fall  with  the  emotion 
itself.  He  was  a  lover  of  clear  thinking,  and  this  must 
be  my  excuse  for  a  digression  that  may  clear  up  a  con* 
fused  attitude  towards  his  work.  He  seems  to  me  a 
singularly  appealing  type  of  the  minor  artist,  the  kind 
one  loves  better  than  those  of  accredited  greatness. 
For  variety,  copiousness  and  vitality,  Inness,  Wins? 
low  Homer,  and  perhaps  Wyant  are  his  superiors ; 
any  of  these  comes  nearer  to  meeting  the  usual  notion 


75 


of  the  great  painter,  and  yet  I  would  sacrifice  all  their 
work  if  I  might  keep  the  "Manor  House,"  or  "Adi? 
rondack  Scenery."  Not  because  I  underrate  these 
large  and  genial  personalities  ju&  mentioned,  but  be? 
cause  I  believe  that  the  future  is  more  likely  to  dupli* 
cate  approximately  their  type  of  vision  and  degree  of 
skill.  I  imagine  Homer  Martin's  fame  as  compared 
with  theirs  will  suffer  vicissitudes.  He  is  more  aloof 
and  complicated;  they  more  simply  explicable  and 
more  nearly  related  to  average  wholesome  predilec* 
tions.  They  are  more  democratic  and  of  our  land  and 
time,  he  more  aristocratic  and  more  free  of  the  whole 
world  of  contemplation,  I  can  imagine  Homer  Martin 
being  at  times  forgotten.  I  am  equally  certain  that  he 
will  be  perenially  rediscovered,  and  always  with  that 
thrill  which  the  finding  of  some  bygone  poet  of  minor 
but  delicately  certain  flight  brings  to  the  man  of  open 
heart  and  sympathetic  imagination. 


76 


TWO  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTY  COPIES 
OF  THIS  BOOK  ON  DUTCH  HAND* 
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